


find your way home (let your cuts and bruises heal)

by Star_flaming



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: (right at the end), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Bilbo, Folk Music, Graphic Depictions of Shoving Down Emotions, Inspired by Fanart, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, because I (like Tolkien) can't help but put song into everything, despite a lot of medical care I'm REALLY VAGUE about the actual injuries, is the One Ring even there? that's for you to decide, it's there but like subtly, old timey herbalist medical care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 51,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22958551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_flaming/pseuds/Star_flaming
Summary: None of Bella's stories had ever told of the hard work of cleaning up a battle, there was no glory in it. But it was better to throw herself into the work than face the fact that she had very nearly lost the ones she loved, face the trauma of the battle, of the dragon sickness, of all the darkness that loomed over her shoulder. After all, tears were for when you were in privacy, and there was precious little of that when one was named regent for a grievously wounded king.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 393





	1. Outside the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> When the last film came out I wasn't really in a good place for fandom, I was moving from the US to France for university, so I was too busy dealing with bureaucracy to really be reading fic. That said, I rewatched the films about a year ago and fell headfirst into a fandom about five years too late. So I was quietly meandering through tumblr, peeking at old pieces of fanart and meta etc when I spotted [this](https://hattedhedgehog.tumblr.com/post/80110236922/just-close-your-eyes-the-sun-is-going-down-youll) piece of fanart and I took off running.  
> The whole story is written, I will be updating once a week on Saturday.  
> This was written listening exclusively to Hozier and folk songs during very slow days at the opera company I work at and to be honest I barely proof read it - we die like men.
> 
> title from Mars by Sleeping at Last

The tent was quiet now. A rare occurrence. Usually it was filled with healers, or Bard or Thranduil or Dain or any number of emissaries in their names. They were trying to heal the wounds dealt by destruction or start the hard work of rebuilding. But now it was quiet.

And Belladonna Baggins, sitting among the three cots, was the only one awake. She moved between the three beds in equal turn. Here lay each dwarf in the line of succession of Erebor; Fíli, Kíli, and Thorin. Each horribly injured, and each asleep either through pain or sedative. They had been wounded, each of them, to the brink of death. It was commented to be a miracle they lived, and Bella didn’t think about it, couldn’t let herself think about how close she had come to losing them.

Brushing back Fíli’s hair as he twitched in his sleep, Bella shushed him gently, not wanting his distress to wake Kíli. The brothers seemed to know each other’s pain and if one was distressed, the other would inevitably wake. And they got little enough sleep as it was, with people wanting to demand leadership out of them, to know what Erebor would do to make up for this awful battle and the dragon before it.

Fíli settled soon enough under Bella’s ministrations, and she glanced over at Kíli, glad to see him yet asleep. Once she was assured both of them were settled, she moved back to Thorin, and sat the little stool there, taking Thorin’s hand and stroking it, kissing the knuckles intermittently.

She dozed off there, bent over his hand, and woke suddenly, shocked from dreams of war, and found that she had slid from the stool, ended up kneeling beside Thorin’s bed, still bent over his hand. There was talking happening above her, soft voiced, and when she listened it was just a healer talking to Kíli, talking of Fíli’s fever, explaining it wasn’t the killing kind just yet. The “yet” didn’t seem to ease the younger prince at all, not that Bella was surprised. Kíli had the sort of admiration for his brother all younger siblings had, the kind that didn’t know how to exist in the world without their friendly, guiding hand. The thought he could lose his brother wouldn’t ease him at all. She had better go over there and put it in nicer words.

Forcing herself awake, she sat up, rubbing at her neck, wincing when it tightened when she turned to see how the princes were faring. Fíli was still twitching in his sleep, the fever persistent from the infected wound. Kíli, even as infection had been kept at bay from him, seemed to feel his brother’s wounds just as though they were his own.

“Bella,” he said, seeing her sit up. “Bella, you should rest.”

“Oh hush,” she said, even as she thought that was mighty high talk for a dwarf as injured as he was. “If not for my neck, I would feel right as rain. And why are you sitting up?”

The healer was a dwarf, for they allowed no other kinds in the royal tent. He had a beard mostly white, if not for a few streaks of grey that threaded through here and there. He also looked grateful to see Bella making her way to Kíli and just about forcing him down.

“Fíli has a fever,” he said, as though that were answer enough. And to him, it probably was.

“And he’ll work through it on his own,” assured Bella. “Think of when he recovers, do you think he’ll want to have seen you reopening your wounds trying to help him?”

“But…”

“I will tie you down to your bed, don’t think I won’t.” That made him quiet and lay down, but his eyes never left his brother. Bella went there next, and introduced herself to the healer, who chuckled and said,

“Aye, we all know who you are. Litr, son of Vitr at your service.”

“At yours and your family’s,” returned Bella. “What can I do for Fíli?”

“Cold water. We’ll make compresses for him, help combat the fever.”

“Do dwarves use barley water? We hobbits use it for fever.”

“Barley water? Can’t say we do. But at this point, we’ll try it.”

“Please Bella, if it helps, please,” said Kíli, eyes firmly on his twitching brother, even as they were drooping again. Litr must have given him something to make him sleep.

“I’ll see what I can do,” soothed Bella. “Just sleep, Kíli. You need your rest.” She soothed him down to sleep, and sighed. “Well, I’ll bring water, and see if I can find any barley.”

“Best of luck. I’ll send for you if the King wakes again.” With a tired smile, Bella left the quiet of the tent, and into the pearl pale dawn.

The battlefield had yet to be cleared, and the ground was muddied from the blood spilled. It was enough to make her wear shoes, the first time she had looked at her feet and seen the red mud. At least the dark of her boots masked whatever horrible amount of blood was to be found there.

Bella set out, rolling the stiffness out of her neck still, still tired. Nightmares didn’t allow much for rest, but she didn’t expect much, they really weren’t that far out from the battle. So many of the dead still needed burying. She was lucky the Company survived, she could have lost them. Wounded or not, they were each _alive._ That was more than some had. More than most, really.

Most of the grain that anyone had had already been ground up into flour for bread rather than let rot, but there was some, for the horses and such. When Bella asked for a small amount of barley, she had been stared at, until she explained it was a hobbit cure for fever, and she set about preparing it. She washed the grain before setting it to boil over one of the many fires that were going, and as it did, she took a bucket of water back to the royal tent, letting Litr set to work on compresses, helping settle them on Fíli’s forehead, neck, armpits, and groin. Checking on Kíli (still asleep but restless, not from fever but from bad dreams most like) and Thorin (deeply drugged on milk of poppy still, he had tried to get to his feet last time he had been awake), she hurried back to her boiling grain.

She discarded the water and got a new amount, ready to boil it down. Usually a hobbit would add honey, make it more palatable to take, but honey was a luxury here on the battlefield. Winter was on its way, most things were luxuries here.

That was part of the desperation Bard had – Laketown was so heavily damaged, people were without home and food and the winter was approaching fast. She had promised her share of the gold, but gold would not feed his people nor house them. Gold, without goods to trade for, was nothing more than another sort of metal.

It was what made Bella worry too. They kept Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli in the royal tent out by the battlefield long after they could have been moved for fear of what might happen if they took them within Erebor once more. Thorin had overcome his dragon sickness, but resurgence worried people, and while Fíli and Kíli hadn’t succumbed, there wasn’t assurance they wouldn’t just yet. But come winter, what would they do?

“No use worrying over that just yet,” she told herself, taking the boiled down barley water off the flame and realized she didn’t have a strainer to collect only the water. Looking down at it, she took a breath and just took the earthenware jar (no gold was allowed anywhere near the royal family) and strained the water through her skirt. There was nothing else to be done.

The clump of boiled barley clung to her skirts, even as she gathered it and tossed it aside. It had been boiled too many times, it wasn’t going to sprout, she thought despondently. Battlefields, Desolations from Dragons, and winter was edging closer every day. This wasn’t the ideal position for any hobbit.

The jar was warm in her hands as she made her way back to the royal tent. She’d leave it with Litr for Fíli to drink once it had cooled, she had the rest of the Company to check up on. He was in the process of changing the bandages for Thorin, a necessity if they didn’t want his skin to heal over the gauze and fuse it to his skin. Bella offered to help, taking the soiled bandages to boil to be used on someone else. There was only so many to go around, after all.

The wounds didn’t look at horrifying as when they had been freshly dealt, but they were still ugly. Litr took one look at her, and seemed to see what she was dealing with, and sent her off, not asking her to help reapply the poultice and rebind his wounds. “I’ll give the prince the barley water when time comes.”

The sun was firmly overhead now, as Bella found Bombur, helping spread the food to everyone who needed feeding. Elves, Dwarves, Men alike needed food, and Bombur offered his skills and only a fool would turn him away.

“Morning, Bell,” he greeted, pulling her into his vast embrace. “How fares the King?”

“Still asleep last I saw him. Fíli has a fever still, but I’ve made some barley water, once it cools we’ll give it to him.”

“Is that a hobbit cure?” she nodded.

“How are you, Bombur?”

“Well as can be. You look tired.”

“If Fíli is disturbed by his fever, Kíli wakes and wants to help tend him. If Kíli has a nightmare or his pain is too bad, Fíli wakes and is insensible but needing to be there for him. Thorin, when he wakes, tries to get up and help when he knows what’s going on, half the time the poppy milk that’s keeping him from pain also makes him as delirious as Fíli from fever. And then Bard and Thranduil and Dain all have demands and…it’s not as bad as it could be. Thorin and Kíli both could have died, Fíli’s fever if it gets worse _can still_ kill him and…”

“Have you slept?”

“Yes, I slept, don’t worry about me.”

“I always worry about you. You hobbits eat seven times a day and we forced you to eat much less than half that.”

She smiled, and let him fuss her into eating something. She had to bring food back to her boys and to Litr, or whoever was taking over for him. But there were so many others she needed to check on first. Bard’s children were here now, Sigrid had taken them under her arms and followed her father once the battle was finished and Bella was not leaving children unattended in a place like this. Still, Bombur could be prevailed upon to speak truly of Bifur and Bofur’s state of being, she’d only need to see them in passing to be sure.

As she ate, he told her about how Bifur was a little battered but generally alright, and Bofur was hale as ever. When she finished eating, she took four portions in her arms, balancing them delicately as she made her way back to the royal tent. Litr was still there, he would be there a few more hours, he told her. Kíli they woke to eat, and he looked helplessly upset to not be able to help his brother who was swallowing almost entirely on instinct.

Bella did take him into her arms as she poured the barley water into his mouth. He choked on the flavor, and she stroked his hair, saying, “I know, I know, but you must drink, it will help your fever.” Finally he swallowed, and only then did she turn to Thorin. He was stirring by Litr’s nudging, waking to eat.

“Bella,” he rasped, and she went to him, taking his hand in hers, kissing his knuckles.

“Thorin,” she said, so glad to see him sensate. “You must eat.”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course I am. It’s your nephew you need to worry about, not me. Fíli has a fever, but it will break.”

“Mistress Baggins has brewed him a hobbit cure for fever,” said Litr. “Your Majesty, you must eat.”

“What did you give him?” asked Thorin even as he took the bowl of porridge.

“Barley water. We use it on our fauntlings all the time. Before the frost really comes, I might see if there is thyme on the mountain.”

“Thyme is an old dwarven cure,” agreed Litr. “For both fever and infection. With the amount wounded, I may require we see if it yet grows.” Thorin ate, looking to his nephews. Kíli was awake, and only when they were finished talking did he greet his uncle, both Bella and Litr’s strict gazes keeping him laying down.

When Thorin faded back to sleep, Bella saw him settled in before checking on Fíli’s fever. It didn’t seem changed, but there was still barley water enough for a long while, and she didn’t expect it to change right away.

Kíli demanded news of the rest of the Company, and Bella offered to check in on everyone for him, she was meaning to do so anyway. With his blessing (and she rolled her eyes to get it), she stepped out of the tent again.

The Company was sorting through and organizing the remains of Erebor, parceling out its gold so as to fulfil Bella’s promise to Bard as well as surveying what shelter survived, but they were outside the mountain that day, discussing what destruction had been brought unto Erebor by Smaug. Whole stretches had been destroyed as the Great Worm settled into the gold, but there was much that yet survived. As such, Bella could see them all.

Dwalin looked tired, and brushed off her concern, saying he had been worse off on the journey, Óin was passed out, having treated Thorin and the princes before Litr came to let him sleep and so she whispered to Glóin about how he and Óin were. Dori and Nori stood like mountains behind Ori as he read from his notes of the state of the mountain to Dain, but they spared a moment to nod to her, before going back to forcing Dain and his men to listen to their little brother. Ori didn’t seem to notice her, but she could see he looked mostly alright, just tired.

Balin was old but determined, speaking with Bard when Bella found them. Bard’s children were nearby and seemed happy enough to see her. She had been checking in on them after all, what with the bloody mud and the piles of bodies still needing burial not that far away. She should really go help with that. They’d need to get below the frost line and fast, once it came if they were any higher than that, they’d get kicked back up again and no one needed that horror. She just wasn’t sure of the frost line here.

“Bella,” greeted Tilda, going and embracing her.

“Oh Tilda, how are you doing?” she asked, releasing the girl.

“Alright.” But there were shadows in her eyes, and in Bain’s as well, though he tried to hide it. Sigrid didn’t try to hide it, she knew what she had pulled her siblings into.

She needed to check on Fíli’s fever, she needed to help dig below the frost line, she needed to help carry dwarves to the mountain to be laid in the stone. She needed to keep these children from drowning in the bloody mud.

“Prince Fíli has a fever, I was going to climb the mountain, see if there isn’t thyme to help break it and help his wounds. You’re welcome to come with me,” said Bella. Bard heard that, and turned his head away from talking with Balin.

“Thyme?” he asked.

“I’ve already made him barley water, but we hobbits use that, I don’t know if it would work on dwarves. And if it does, then we have thyme on hand for festering wounds.”

“Why not just use cold compresses for the fever?”

“We’re using those too. But there must be infections in you Men as well. Thyme must help you as well. We don’t have long before the frost really sets in, and there’s much to do before then.”

Bard looked at her and said, without looking away, “Sigrid, take your siblings to look for thyme with Mistress Baggins.”

“What? Da!” protested Bain.

“You’re too young to be here in the first place, Bain. Go pick thyme with Mistress Baggins, it’ll keep us all alive.”

And so they went, Bella with Sting on her hip at Balin’s insistence and her mithril shirt yet under her dress, above her shift, ending up looking much like a fichu, even if it was metal, not linen. She would put her body between these children and what fiends yet lingered nearby, if any escaped the blades of the four armies below.

“What does thyme look like, Mistress Baggins?” asked Tilda, gasping for the climb as they all were.

“It’s a green plant, there will be no flowers to recognize it this late in the year,” said Bella. “I’ll find some and then you can match it, it’ll be easier than describing. You’ll be like to pluck weeds.”

“Look at that,” said Bain, looking down at the remnants of the battle below. “It doesn’t look like a battle. It looks like…like a fair or something.”

“Would that it was. Bain, come along, I think I see some thyme up here.” He wasn’t happy to be here, but Bella was glad Bard didn’t look at her and see the one who stood faithfully at Thorin’s side but just someone who wanted to get his children away from such horrid ground. Glad he had sent them all up the mountain with her.

Indeed it was thyme, which was a relief. Bella picked it and showed it to the three children, who each took a sprig of it to match against other plants to fill the bucket Bella had brought. Bella, for her part, idly collected the herb, an eye out for dangers. Orcs and Dragons, who knew what else might come?

The bucket (usually used for water and still a little wet, which was good for transporting the thyme down the mountain) filled up soon enough, and Sigrid offered to carry it for Bella.

“That’s very kind, I’ll be fine,” said Bella.

“No, really, I insist,” said Sigrid, and eventually she had to relinquish it to the daughter of Man. They climbed back down the mountain, and it seemed the excursion had tired out Tilda at least, who went to her father’s tent with the intent of resting while Bella took a fistful of thyme and went back to the royal tent.

Litr and Óin were trading off duties then, and Bella was glad to see her dear friend there, even as she thanked Litr for all he did.

“Best not mix treatments,” Óin counselled when Bella offered the thyme. “Litr told me of the barley water. We’ll try that a time, if it doesn’t help, we’ll make some thyme tea. Meantime, I’ll get that made to oil.”

“Alright,” agreed Bella, and went to check on the occupants herself. Fíli looked no worse and no better, Kíli was asleep but due for bandage change soon, as was Thorin, who had apparently woken and had been confused, asking for Bella because hadn’t she been there just a second ago? He had jostled his wounds and though the bleeding had abetted by now, he had still hurt himself.

“Ought I wait for him to wake again, do you think?” asked Bella.

“He’s under by poppy milk, he won’t be up again anytime soon,” dismissed Óin. “Can ye fetch me some new bandages for Kíli and Thorin?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll be right back.” And so she ducked out the tent, hurrying to where the healers of Men, Dwarf, and Elf were sharing supplies. Sigrid was there, helping grind down the thyme to be made into oil, a healer from Laketown parceling half the thyme aside for tea. Bandages were fished out of the boiling pot easily enough, and Bella squeezed all the water out of them, before rolling them up. An elf nearby was arguing with a dwarf over treatment methods, but it seemed like it wouldn’t come to blows or destroy the cautious peace, so Bella didn’t interrupt.

As she hurried back to the royal tent, she glanced at the distance where Men were being buried and reminded herself to help them. Still, she first would help changing the dressings on Kíli’s wounds. Those were easier for her to handle.

“Ah, Bella! Welcome back. I see you brought plenty.”

“I thought it best to have some on hand for changing Fíli’s as well.”

“That will be soon enough. Come on, let’s wake the lad.”

Kíli seemed disoriented at first, roused from dreams as he was, but acquiesced to having his bandages changed. Sitting there glumly as Óin unwrapped and rewrapped his wounds, applying tinctures to help the healing, Bella gathered up the old bandages to drop into the boiling pot. As Óin worked, Bella gave him the update on the rest of their Company he had asked for, and when he was laying down again, she sat next to him, talking softly as the strain of sitting upright for so long took its toll on Kíli. Fíli’s compresses needed changing too, and when they started to work, the movements seemed to displease him, making him mutter under his breath before waking suddenly, unsure where he was again. At least his delirium was generally better than Thorin’s, well, less violent, and Bella managed to talk him down as Óin worked.

“Fíli, I need you to drink something before you go back to sleep, just a few sips,” Bella said, offering the barley water again. He took a sip and turned his head away immediately. “I know, I know, it tastes awful, doesn’t it? We add honey, in the Shire, but there’s none of that here. You fight a battle and you won’t drink some barley water? Where’s the brave prince I know you are?”

She cajoled him into drinking a few more sips, mostly waiting out his memory of each sip, and only when he had had enough to satisfy her did she let him lay down and help change the compresses.

Comparatively, Thorin was easy, he didn’t wake at all, Óin just sat him up and Bella took him in her arms, holding him still for Óin, which made it easy for her not to see the horrible wounds that laid him so low.

“Are you heading to hand those back to the rest of the healers?” asked Óin as Bella gathered together the old bandages.

“Yes, we’ll boil them for the next use. I expect we’ll also be making thyme tea to pass around to anyone with fevers.”

“It’s a miracle Thorin doesn’t have a fever, looking at those wounds. Better bring some just in case, have him drink it next time he’s awake.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Bella, and ducked out.

Bard was not far outside, and he walked at her side, his pace slow to match hers (curse the long legs of Big Folk). “Thank you for taking my children,” he said. “They said they wouldn’t leave me, but this is a dark place for them.”

“They seem stubborn enough they’d just come back if you sent them away,” offered Bella.

“That’s very true.” He looked down at her and said, “I would, however, like to speak to Thorin soon, or even one of his heirs.”

“You spoke to Balin earlier. He speaks with the King’s voice.”

“Perhaps. But he does not have the authority of the King. I just need a promise or two out of him, just affirming what Balin has said. It has to come from him or a few years down the line any decisions made now could be called into question.”

That was…that was fair. Sighing, she looked down at the bandages in her arms and thought of Fíli and his fever that was persistent but not _yet_ dangerous but could become so if it went on much longer, of how sometimes Thorin was entirely unaware of what was real, what was dream, and what was memory, of how Kíli wore himself out from sitting up but was better off than either his brother or Uncle though not by much, and said, “I’ll collect you when he’s able. He’s still recovering from working so hard with you all yesterday.”

“That’s all I ask. You should rest, Mistress Baggins, you climbed up a mountain today.” With a nod, he parted from her, and Bella looked up to the sun, now just past its zenith, and sighed, before continuing onwards.

They had just changed the water in the boiling pot, so it wasn’t yet boiling but it would be fresh. There was disagreement if they should put any sort of herb in there to infuse into the bandages or to leave the water pure. Setting her load with the other bandages that would be added once the water was boiling, Bella joined the discussion.

Sudri, son of Nordri, was adamant that a tincture should be added, one of yarrow. Friedeswide, of Laketown, was horrified by the suggestion and would not budge that it should be left entirely alone. Irienall, from the Mirkwood, insisted that the shells of a certain type of nut would add some amount of healing of the elves into the bandages, if applied correctly. This interested Friedeswide, but Sudri would not hear of elvish healing used on a dwarf.

“Prince Kíli lives now only because of elvish healing,” pointed out Bella. “Elvish healing on a dwarf has kept one of the line of Durin among us.”

“Mistress, you cannot agree that it be applied so…so entirely!” protested Sudri.

“I agree with you, Sudri. There should not be elvish healing in those bandages. But nor should there be yarrow in the water.”

“Why?” asked Irienall, tilting his head curiously.

“If there is elvish healing in each bandage, then you cannot take each person’s wishes into account. There are dwarves who would rather their wounds go unbound than have the magic of an elf applied to them. You cannot decide for each of them that they have no choice. But they also do not all agree to yarrow in the same way. Leave the water alone, apply yarrow or magic to each person, not try and apply people to tinctures.”

“That’s very wise,” said Friedeswide. They agreed to leave the water alone and apply as they saw fit to each person, and Bella helped boil another bowl for the thyme tea and helped carry around mugs of it to Men who threw their heads about in fever as if to get away from it, letting those closer to their size actually get them to drink it. Elves eschewed the help of thyme, preferring their own methods, but Tauriel, who sat in eyeline of the royal tent and stared at it as though to know how Kíli was doing, accepted a cup if only for something to drink.

“Sit with me a while,” she asked of Bella.

“I’ll fetch us some food, and then I’ll sit,” compromised the hobbit, doing exactly that. But on her way, she put the last of the thyme tea she carried in the royal tent, in case Thorin needed it. All three were quiet now, and Óin looked relieved they should be so, shooing her to fetch food for herself.

It was much the same as breakfast was, as dinner the last night was, as all meals were. Little more than stew, little more than porridge, something that could be stretched to feed so many. But Bella ate next to Tauriel all the same, wishing it was crisped fish with lemon.

“He fares well,” said Bella eventually. “He tires when he sits up, and he tries to sit up far too often, but he has no fever, nor is he like to die from his wounds. He only needs time.”

“But his brother is unwell, and so it weighs on his heart,” said Tauriel. “Mortal grief before grieving is necessary.”

Bella thought about how if one of the princes was in distress the other always seemed to know, and sighed. Tauriel wasn’t wrong. “Once the fever breaks it will be easier,” was all she said.

“And when will that be?”

“Hopefully soon. We are treating him with barley water now, but if it doesn’t work, that thyme tea. Thyme oil is being mixed right now too, we’ll use that to wash the wound.”

“Not both?”

“Óin doesn’t want to mix treatments. I’ve been treated with barley water before, but I don’t know about dwarves.”

“You mixed him a cure?”

“A treatment. Not a cure. Just something to help him along. Hobbits don’t _cure,_ we just _help._ ”

“Well, you’re doing plenty of helping.” Her eyes did not leave the tent at all. “I know the dwarves do not want an elf in the tent of their king, but I want to see him.”

“Thranduil has been inside before. But that was for political discussion, and he was shuffled out soon enough. Kíli should be healed first, I think. He’ll be out to see you soon enough.”

“But what of his brother?” She was right, he would not leave his brother’s side, not even for the one he loved.

“I’ll…I’ll pass on a message for you in the meantime,” offered Bella.

“Tell him I think of him always, and pass where he lays often as I can. Tell him I would see him, were I allowed. Tell him that he must rest that I may see him again. Tell him I love him.” There was no hesitancy there, no uncertainty to speak of love. It was as though her love for him was simply fact, as if she asked her to tell Kíli of the numbers of the dead, or of the wounded.

“I can tell him all that,” promised Bella, and rose to do exactly that.

Kíli was yet asleep and message or not Óin would not hear of waking him. Tauriel nodded, accepting that, but asked Bella pass it along when she had the chance, before standing and moving to help where her aid may be accepted.

Bella then turned to the burials, remembering her promise to herself and heading to help.

The Men burying their own scoffed at her help, until she said, “I may be a gentlehobbit, but no hobbit worth their breath doesn’t know the basics of working the earth. Or may I remind you that we all live under the hills and know how to keep the frost from bucking our homes out of those hills?”

So they gave her a spade and she set to work, digging deep. The frost line was deeper than in the Shire, but it was familiar work, digging. She might not do _all_ her own gardening, but she did enough, thank you.

When the grave was deep enough, she would simply move on to the next, digging and digging. She got through three, working alongside Men, before a dwarf begged her help in getting some of the dead to the mountain. She thought of the skeletal remains of the poor souls who didn’t escape and thought she’d need help laying them in stone, too, as she helped lay the dead gently on the wagons pulled to the mountains.

She made a pitiful figure by then, covered in dirt, even her mithril shirt dirtied. The Men sent her on her way then, and she made her tired way back to the royal tent, the sky spilling the colors of sunset. Closing her eyes a brief moment and taking a breath, she thought the frost was due any day now. They would have to work double hard to dig graves for Men deep enough. Perhaps she’d come the next day.

Washing her face and hands briefly, she stepped into the royal tent again, collapsing onto the stool first chance she got, her attention on Thorin. He slept, but the tea was gone, so he must have been awake at some point, and coherent enough to drink it.

“I tried to get Fíli to drink some of the barley water,” said Óin, catching her attention. “Wouldn’t do it for me, stubborn lad. Think you could help, lass?”

“Yes, yes of course,” she said, pushing herself to her feet, taking the pot and seeing there was enough for one more day’s treatment before she’d have to make more. Fíli was roused, but he was only barely conscious, and Bella began the fight to make him drink. Without honey it was a foul drink, and he’d take one sip before turning his head away.

Sometime during the process Kíli woke, and watched with sad eyes to see his brother the way he was. When Fíli was finally laid to sleep again, he spoke. “Thank you Bella,” he said. “For fighting him. Stubborn as a rock.”

“If the barley water doesn’t work by tomorrow we’ll try thyme,” said Bella. “It might be more palatable. Oh, and Tauriel has a message for you.”

He lit up at that, and Bella smiled. That smile was so like his uncle’s, and it was a comfort to see it. She recounted the message, and Kíli looked pleased almost beyond words to hear it.

“Yes, yes, we’re all very glad you’re in love,” said Óin. “But she isn’t allowed in here.”

“Not even at my invitation?” argued Kíli.

“You’re the third with any say here. Thorin’s first, then Fíli. When you’re in your own tent or room back in the mountain, then you can see her all you’d like. Thorin won’t let her in, so she won’t come in.”

“I’m to be your intermediary,” offered Bella.

“Tell her I think of her often,” begged Kíli. “That I want so badly to see her. That I love her too.”

“Gladly.”

“Maybe don’t say all that when your Uncle wakes up. It’ll take him some time and a half to come around to you and your lass,” said Óin.

“Why? He’s got Bella.”

She blushed at that as Óin reminded Kíli that she was a _hobbit,_ not an _elf._ “Excuse me,” she said, face hot. “I must go speak to Balin and Dwalin.” They let her go without argument.

She found them in deep discussion with each other, but they greeted Bella warmly all the same. “What can we do for you?” asked Balin.

“The dead in Erebor, they need to be taken down to the stone too, don’t they?” she asked.

“Aye,” agreed Dwalin. “But not before those who might be eaten by the carrion. They can wait a few days more after so long.”

Bella nodded, and said, “Would I be allowed to help? Or is that something I shouldn’t…?”

“Perhaps not the burials themselves,” said Balin. “But transporting the bones, or telling us all where they are, that you could do. You and Ori, perhaps. He could make note after you find them.”

She nodded, and found that nod became nodding off, jolting herself awake. “Bella, are you not tired?” asked Dwalin.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she dismissed as she had through the whole journey. “I’m fine.” It seemed they didn’t believe her any more than they had on the journey. And just like then, she felt great determination to prove them wrong. “Fíli won’t drink his barley water, it’s a fight every time. Takes more out of you than you’d think.”

“Fever not broken?” asked Balin.

“Óin says if it isn’t broken by tomorrow, we’ll try thyme tea, and if that doesn’t help, that’s when we start worrying for him. Or if he grows any hotter…” Shaking her head to rid herself of dark thoughts, Bella cleared her throat and said, “I really must be off, dinner should be ready now, and they’ll need it in the royal tent.”

“I’ll come with you,” offered Balin. “I have need to talk to Thorin as it is.”

With two people it was easier to carry all the portions of dinner. Óin wrestled the broth of the stew down Fíli’s throat while Kíli ate his with tormented eyes fixed on his brother, doubtlessly wishing he could help. Thorin, when he woke was insensate from the poppy milk, but he settled easily enough when Bella pressed him back down into his bed.

“Bella, Bella, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he moaned, reaching for her.

“I know, Thorin, I’ve long since forgiven you all you’ve done. Of course I forgive you.”

“I treated you abominably, you were frightened in the mountain and I would not see it. I thought us surrounded by those who would do us harm, but all I did was push my kin away and frighten you. And then I tried to kill you! You!”

“Shh, Thorin, shh. I forgive you. You were unwell, I was not frightened of you, I only worried for you. Shh. I worry still for you, you must calm yourself.”

He settled, at least he was not frantically apologizing and reaching for Bella as though he was once more grievously wounded on the battlefield and needed it all out before he would die. After Bella helped him eat, sense did seem to be making its way through his eyes again, until he blinked and glanced at Balin.

“Balin,” he greeted.

“Glad to see you healing, lad,” greeted the old dwarf. “Been talking to Bard.”

“And what does he want?” asked Thorin, sounding absolutely exhausted. Bella bit her lip and set her stool by Thorin’s head, brushing back his hair from his face, sneaking a feel for fever (none, and thank goodness for that) as she did. Thorin seemed soothed by it, and so she continued.

Balin told what he had been speaking to Bard about, much the same as always. Bella’s share of gold was fine and good, but gold could not feed nor house his people. Smaug had done more than burn flat the battlefield, he had destroyed much of Laketown. His people had no home, not enough wood to stay warm, though food was rather assured by Thranduil’s aid. He needed help, and good leader as he was, he wasn’t afraid to beg for it.

“What assurances have you made?”

“Well, we’re still surveying the mountain. Smaug destroyed a lot, on his way to the hoard, but plenty survives. Once Dain’s men are settled, then we’ll see about the Men.”

“He spoke to me earlier,” said Bella. “He just wants you to say you agree in front of witnesses. So that way in the coming years there can be no accusation that it was done without the king’s knowledge or consent. He just wants the safety of the assurance.”

“I will…will need to know…” said Thorin, but he was fading back to sleep.

“Please, Thorin, stay awake just a little longer.” He rallied himself for her, and managed to look at Balin and say,

“Why not make a contract of it?”

“Men don’t usually deal in contracts like that. Value words spoken face to face,” said Balin. “But you look like you won’t last through the whole discussion.”

“Can you blame him?” asked Bella, frustration bubbling up through her tiredness. “Bard and Thranduil and Dain and all the rest come tramping in here whenever they have the chance, he’s barely had time to rest and heal!”

Her voice raised, and it disturbed Fíli, who woke and looked about in incomprehension. Óin moved swiftly to the prince’s side and worked to calm him, and took the opportunity to get him to swallow some more barley water. When the prince was calmed and had slipped back to sleep, he looked over at Bella and said, “We’ll be needing more barley water soon, or else thyme tea.”

“I can brew some more water,” assured Bella. She turned back to Thorin and saw him gazing up at her with eyes a little foggy from either the poppy milk or pain or perhaps simple exhaustion. “We’ll break his fever yet,” she assured him.

“Balin,” he said instead, barely glancing away from her. “Bring Bard and Thranduil. And Dain.”

“Thorin, you can’t expect to handle doing politicking, you’re barely awake as it is,” scolded Bella, even as Balin left the tent.

“I’m not going to,” he said. “I’m naming you regent.”

“You… _what?_ Thorin! You need to tell me that first!”

“I am. They’re not here yet.”

“I…I… _Thorin!_ ” Kíli woke at that, blinking blearily and muttering,

“Bella, ‘s that you?”

“Yes, yes, sorry Kíli, all’s well, go back to sleep,” she assured, moving to stroke his cheek. In moments he was asleep again, and she stomped back to Thorin and hissed, “Thorin, you can’t name me regent!”

“Why not?” he asked simply.

“Well,” she blustered, “well, because you have other kin who are upright!”

“Mmm. You’d be first to speak for me anyway.” He was fading again, even as he clearly was trying to rouse himself.

“And why is that?”

“’m going to marry you.” And with that he was asleep and Bella was frozen at his side, staring down at him.

“Óin?” she whispered, at last.

“Yes, lass?” returned the healer.

“That mithril wasn’t just to keep me safe, was it?”

“No, lass. That was a courting gift of kingly quality. Even in the depth of madness, he loved you, and meant for you to stay at his side.”

“He said he would not part with a single coin, but he gave me the mithril so easily. He never thought I would leave him, he wouldn’t be parting with it, not really.”

“Exactly so.” Bella sat down by Thorin and stroked at his beard and thumbed at his lips a moment, studying his face. Hobbits don’t cure, they help. That was what she had told Tauriel. And she would gladly help Thorin. It was hardly a bouquet of flowers displayed proudly in a window, but she supposed that’s what she got, loving a dwarf.

When she heard Balin, leading Bard, Thranduil, and Dain, she shook Thorin awake, remaining seated at his head. “Do you remember what you said about calling Bard and Thranduil?” she asked softly, urgently. If he didn’t remember, she could probably come up with something to keep them happy.

“Yes I do,” he said, blinking sleep from his eyes. “I’m to name you regent.”

“You might have thought of a better time to tell me that!” she hissed, but turned when the Big Folk entered, stooping a bit for the tent built to dwarven standards while Dain stood comfortably beside them.

“Mistress Baggins, I thought you promised to collect me yourself,” said Bard, trying for some sort of friendliness.

“I’m afraid Balin was already gone by the time I recalled that promise,” she said instead.

“At last the dwarf king awakes,” said Thranduil in his careless way. “Does he deign speak to us now?”

“His Majesty was grievously injured and has been healing,” said Óin, voice a little too sharp to be called polite. But he was in the process of refreshing Fíli’s compresses, so interruption while working could be claimed. “You talked to him enough yesterday as was.”

“Not for very long at any time.”

“Aye, and for that I have called you,” said Thorin, his voice stronger than it had been before. Perhaps speaking to Thranduil forced him to be stronger than he was. “I am laid low by my wounds and cannot do as a king ought.” His hand took Bella’s then, and he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Bard and Thranduil both started to straighten in understanding before their heads hit the roof of tent and they lowered them again. Dain silently raised his brows. “I name Belladonna Baggins as my regent. She will speak with all my authority.”

“Until such a time as she speaks with a Queen’s voice, I suppose,” said Thranduil.

“Aye,” agreed Thorin simply.

“She’s a fine choice,” decided Dain, nodding to her. Bella liked him, he was warm in the way the Company had been with her, and he loved his cousin. Out of the three before her, she liked him the most.

“It does make things easier,” offered Bard. “Rather than having to wake you at all times.”

“And speaking of that, we should let them sleep,” said Bella. Óin was glad of the opportunity to shoo the elf king from the tent, and as he did, Bella turned to Thorin and said in an undertone, “Next time you name me regent I want at least an hour’s notice.”

“I’ll try and remember,” said Thorin, smiling at her. That smile of his, it always made him seem years younger, as if joy was a frost heave, kicking the sorrow of exile out of the way to reveal the prince that had been buried below. It melted her heart each time, and she loved to see it.

“See that you do,” was all she said before leaving the tent. The three kings were standing just outside, who all looked expectantly at her. She took a breath and said, “It’s nearly night and the work is hard. Let us meet tomorrow morning.”

It was agreed, after a few token protests, and Bella set out to brew more barley water. She yet had no sieve, and so again she filtered through her skirts, careful in her pouring to be close enough to the fire to see but not that she might set her skirts aflame.

When the barley water was delivered to Óin and the royal family was settled as possible, Bella took her place as she had so far at Thorin’s side, kneeling beside his bed, hand pressed against her lips in an unending kiss as sleep took her under.

* * *

She puttered around Bag End, making sure all was in order. She was expecting guests, after all. Her doilies were washed and fresh and white, both her own work and that of her relations. The kitchen was warm with a ready dinner, and what was she forgetting? There was something she was forgetting, something she had to get ready before her guests arrived.

Oh! Of course! Flowers! What sort of gentlehobbit would she be if she didn’t have a vase of flowers on the table? A basket went over her elbow to collect the flowers in, and she had exactly the right arrangement in mind. Stepping out, she took a deep breath of the fine Shire air, raised a hand in greeting to those who passed by, and stepped out to collect the flowers.

Stepped out into

_mud_

Raise her foot, it’s red red _r e d_

_dirt becomes mud by water, a good watering makes mud_

_mud mud blood made the mud_

_battlefield mud is blood_

_you never left the field bella_

_“thorin! thorin, stay awake, please”_

_The king is dead! Long live the king!_

_so much blood_ _t h e_

_What a good watering!_ _praised mr gamgee A fine crop this year!_ _k i n g_

_blood on her feet blood all over her feet_ _i s_

_blood blood blood_ **_d e a d_**

Bella awoke with a choked gasp, shuddering, and looked up. A dim tent, just one candle lit. Just enough to see the outlines of those nearby. A hand was clutched in hers, and Bella pulled herself from the horrid fog of sleep, too frightened to try and rest again, and instead fetched the candle.

Fíli she found a little easier, still golden haired and still pale and still no worse than she remembered. His fever was still burning like coals beneath his skin, she thought once touching his brow. The candle sat beside his bed, illuminating her work as she replaced the cold compresses, humming and shushing him when he jerked at the coolness on his hot skin. She found the jar of barley water and lifted his head, coaxing him to drink some if only on instinct. A sip or two made it down his throat, but it was more than would have if she hadn’t tried.

Kíli looked gaunt as ever, his wounds weren’t infected and he didn’t need to be sedated as much as his uncle did, but the pain kept him under and what pain didn’t do healing did, keeping him exhausted. Bella tucked a few unruly locks of hair back into place, her thumb on the side of his throat to feel the pulse thrumming there.

Only then did she brace herself and turn to Thorin.

He looked as he ever did, pale and harrowed but still himself, none of that dark veil of the dragon sickness over his face. She’d call him well, if not for every wound writ large across his body. He was better than he could be, she told herself, he could have died, and it seemed danger was mostly behind him. He couldn’t rule, that was why he had passed it to her, but he wasn’t going to die if she didn’t keep count of his breaths.

Still, she counted breaths as she sat on the stool by him again, shivering a little. The nights were getting colder, any day she expected to see the frost last, no longer melting away under the sun.

“I can’t be your regent,” breathed Bella, counting the breaths that rose and fell in that powerful chest. “I don’t know the first thing about leading anyone.”

Silence answered her, and she didn’t even know what he might say to have the silent argument with him. No one had heard of a hobbit queen, they had their Thain and that was all, it was hardly a position that presided over a mountain with such wealth as Erebor. Suddenly Bella wanted to scream, wanted to wake Thorin and shake him, demanding why he would have put this all on her, why she should fix what he had broken. _This wasn’t in the contract!_ she wanted to scream. _I did not agree to this!_

Instead, she got to her feet in a rush, leaving the candle to illuminate Thorin’s handsome face, and hurried outside. The moon wasn’t in the sky. A late rise, she thought. Perhaps that was an omen of some sort to one of the races camped here, good or ill. Were Dwarves reading the moonrise and divining whether or not they would allow her to be their king’s regent? Were Elves idly watching the stars and thinking Bella would crumble beneath the weight of a mountain? Were Men calling this a doomed venture and preparing to force her to capitulate, calling her Doomed Queen by virtue that the moon did not rise the night the king named her regent?

What bleak thoughts, she caught herself thinking, taking a deep breath of the night air. She had best go back to sleep, perhaps even take up the empty bed next to Glóin as Óin had offered, he would not be using it that night, staying by his charges’ sides, and she really should lie down properly, not simply kneel by a king’s bed.

But the candle by Thorin’s bed. What if he woke confused again, or a nightmare struck? He might knock over the candle and the whole tent would burn and she would lose all four of them and she couldn’t have that, she could not stomach even one more death, not after seeing the battlefield strewn with it and digging four graves that day.

She ended up putting the candle back near Óin, knowing he stayed still in his sleep, and with one more round of the three, she went to find Glóin and rest laying flat for once. She would need it come true morning to face Bard and Thranduil and hold her own against them.

Glóin didn’t so much as stir when she slipped into the tent he was staying in. Dori, Nori, and Ori were sharing it, and all three of them were sound asleep too. It was a comfort, to look over them and see them all hale and whole, and Bella simply stood there a long moment, listening to them snore and breathe, watching their shapes as they shifted in their sleep. It was as good as a lullaby at this point, and it soothed her down to sleep again nearly moments after she lay down.

She didn’t dream of the bloody ground again, which was a relief. She had to face that enough when she was awake.

And awake she did, when the dwarves around her started to stir. Opening her eyes and watching Ori pull on his boots, talking softly with Nori of making note of where all the dead of Erebor were that day, she remembered she had her own responsibilities, new ones now.

Forcing herself upright, Glóin greeted her first. “Morning, Bella. How much work are you taking on today?” It was a common prod among her dwarves, asking how much she’d force herself to do. They all thought she was doing too much.

“All of Thorin’s,” she said only, pulling her hair into some amount of order (honestly, if only the dwarves could handle her cutting it. At least a single braid was simple enough). “He named me regent last night.”

The tent was quiet at that, but no one seemed that surprised. Which, fair, Thorin had placed her next to his throne in the depths of his sickness, and if Óin knew the mithril was a courting gift, surely they all knew it as well.

“That’s quite a lot,” offered Ori eventually.

“We’ll help you where we can,” promised Dori.

Bella smiled at them all, genuinely touched that they would offer that for her, and pulled on her uncomfortable boots once more.

“Since when do you wear shoes?” asked Nori. Bella stilled then, and took a moment before continuing to tie them, saying softly,

“I don’t relish the mud.” He nodded slowly at that. It was a horrible thing, that bloody ground. A hobbit wearing _shoes_ paled in comparison to that, and she was glad they all understood that. “I have to meet with the other leaders, wish me luck with Thranduil.” It was a weak laugh that passed around the tent at that.

The morning was brisk and her lungs barely pricked when she breathed deep. Not winter yet, but soon. Soon.

It was in Bard’s tent that Bella met with the other leaders, each eating as they talked for there was much to do, and dignity be damned they needed food and they needed to talk. Bard explained his people’s need for aid, Thranduil spoke of broken oaths and the loss of life of his people, Dain of his own dead. Bella already knew most of this, but they told her all the same. She ate silently, listening and nodding along, and when the three were finished, Bella said,

“I have never been a ruler. The most leadership I have ever held is the judging of the Best Garden competition in Hobbiton. Hardly a matter of life and death, that. But the dead need burying before the frost sets into the ground. I helped dig graves yesterday, and there were still plenty more to do.”

“Why before frost?” asked Dain.

“Frost heave,” said Bard. “If they aren’t below the frost line, the dug soil can have them pushed up. Trying to dig that deep when the frost is already here makes it easier to heave.”

“Exactly,” agreed Bella. “Dain, I know your people are being laid in the mountain still, do you need aid in that?”

“We’ve enough hands to get them inside,” said the Dwarf Lord.

“Thranduil?”

“Our dead are being honored as they must,” said the elf king.

“Good. Can you have your people help the Men dig their graves? We need as many hands as possible to get them in the earth.” Thranduil made no move to agree or disagree, merely watched her. Well, no answer was to be found there. “Alright, so that’s the dead taken care of. Oh, Dain, the dead in Erebor.”

“We are finding their remains, and when all those of battle are laid in stone, then we will collect those killed by Smaug.”

“Good. Right. The injured. I picked thyme with your children yesterday, Bard, I think we have enough yet for tea for fevers and thyme oil was being made yesterday, it should be ready to wash festering wounds today. If we need more, we need to pick it now. It grows not that far up the mountain, we can send people up to find it.”

“What of when winter comes? There is more to fear than lack of thyme and frost heave,” pointed out Bard.

“Erebor was built for dwarves, not for Men or Elves,” said Bella. “But it is large enough in places. We will move everyone inside the mountain for winter. The forges were lit by Smaug when we fought him below, Ori tells me they yet burn, so we will all have to live down there, the rest of the mountain will be cold is my understanding. At least until some repairs can be made.”

“Do we have fuel enough to keep them lit?”

Dain laughed aloud, a single bark and said, “The forges of Erebor never went out. We’ll be warm all winter long.”

“What of food?” asked Bella. “Nothing survived that long.”

“My people were untouched by the dragon,” said Thranduil calmly. “We have food.”

“And I suppose you want what I promised you if you would give us that food?” asked Bella. He inclined his head. Starvation was his bargaining chip, and no king would let that go so easily. Dwarves were hardy, but not so hardy as _that._

“We brought food as well,” said Dain, looking at the elven king. “More than enough to keep us fed.”

“Do you mean all of us? Dwarf and Man and Elf?” asked Bella. “Or only Dwarf? If we are to survive this winter, we need each other. Your Majesty,” she said, turning to Thranduil, “I have made my promise to you to give you what you demand. You can return to your forest, when spring comes you will have your reparations.”

“I will have it overseen,” said Thranduil. “The promises of dwarves have been too often broken.”

“Be that as it may, I hardly imagine you want to be barricaded in the mountain the whole of winter.”

The discussion dragged on, but it was not interrupted by Thorin fading or Fíli’s fever making him cry out or Kíli’s nightmares of battle, and so much more was decided. Some of it was only formality, some of it was earnest debate. They eventually broke off, to see to their people, and Bella rushed back to the royal tent.

Litr was there, applying thyme oil to Fíli’s festering wound with two other healers tending to Kíli and to Thorin. Word had to have spread of her new status, for they each bowed to her, called her “my lady” and informed her what was being done.

“I’m not so busy I can’t help,” she said, and reached for Fíli’s brow. It seemed a little cooler. “Are we yet giving him barley water?”

“It has helped so far,” said Litr. “But he does drink a lot of it.”

“You can’t already need more.”

“No, but it might be best to set aside some barley for water, keep it from being eaten by horses and rams.”

“I’ll have it done.” She had the power to now. “He seems easier.”

“That he is. The fever is receding, we think.”

“Good. Good. And how is Kíli?”

“Healing. It will be a long road before he is upright again, it took that elf maid to assure he would live at all, but live he will. Thorin has yet to wake today.”

Bella went to him then, and sat beside his head a moment, stroking his hair. He named her regent and slept long into the next day. It was hard, ruling in his name, but if her doing so allowed him such rest, she’d keep doing it. He needed his rest.

It settled her, reassured her, gave her strength to keep going, and in a moment of such bravery she didn't care of those who might see, Bella bent, kissing his brow a long moment, breathing there. When she pulled away, she turned to the healers and asked, “Do you need anything from me?”

“Send around more cold water, we need to refresh the compresses,” said Litr. “And…have someone bring in something gold. Something small.”

“Are we already testing for Dragon Sickness?”

“Winter is coming, my lady. We’ll need to bring them inside soon enough.” Bella nodded, there was indeed wisdom in that. Better know the risks before exposing them to the hoard.

“I’ll see it done.”

She found one of Dain’s men, and he looked at her for a bare second before he realized who she was and offered a polite, “My lady.”

“Run into the mountain,” she ordered. Or said firmly, because that would have to do for ordering, she had never been very good with doing that. “Find a member of Thorin’s Company, tell them bring to me a gold chain. No pendants, no jewels, just gold.”

“Yes, my lady,” he agreed, and turned to do just that. The advantages of being regent, she reflected, watching him run. She didn’t need to give a single justification why. Oh, he’d gossip, more likely than not, but that couldn’t be helped.

Turning her feet, she walked to the tent of healers, checking on the thyme amounts. The oil was, at the moment, plentiful, but they all agreed they’d need to gather far more from the mountain before winter set in. Bella offered to lead them to where she and Bard’s children had found them. They agreed, and soon enough plenty of healers of each race was ready to head up the mountain. Dain caught her as they made their way, and declared he’d go with her, wanting to talk to her about dwarven affairs.

“I thought you kept secrets from outsiders,” she remarked.

“You’re effectively Queen Under the Mountain right now,” he reminded her as they began the climb.

That was true, she supposed.

It was when they reached where the thyme was growing that Dain spoke to her, following her as she picked thyme. “The dead of Erebor are honored dead,” he said. “They need much ceremony. The presence of the ruler of Erebor Reclaimed, for instance.”

“You need me there,” she surmised. “Must I do something beyond simply be there?”

“Speak to their memories, you faced Smaug, speak to his evil to have stolen their home and lives, promise you will ever honor their memories. And that can all be done in Westron.”

“You won’t teach me Khuzdul.”

“Ah, if you are to be Queen, and Thorin was very explicit that he plans to marry you and give you Queen’s voice eventually, you will need to know our language. I don’t expect you’ll know it by then, is all.”

“But I am a hobbit, not a dwarf.”

“A hobbit who reigns over dwarves. Exceptions have to be made. Especially given everything that’s happened to Erebor.”

“You are…remarkably welcoming of the idea of me being Queen.”

“I saw Thorin from time to time during his exile. Losing Erebor, and then losing his grandfather, his father, his brother…it broke him. I’ve seen him at his lowest. He nearly died not a week ago, and he’s already in a better place. I know we can’t attribute _all_ of that to Erebor being reclaimed.”

Bella turned red, and hurried along to the next bit of thyme, wanting to attribute it to exertion.

“It’s hardly me alone,” she demurred.

“Well, you aren’t a _small_ part. Forgive me being so plain with you, but we are to be cousins after all.”

“I have had sorry luck with my own cousins,” said Bella under her breath, thinking of Lobelia. Woman wouldn’t keep her silver so neatly polished. Oh goodness, she realized. The gold of Erebor was shining and fine because gold never tarnished, but the _silver_ of Erebor must be nothing but black hunks of metal at this point. Someone had better have a fine polish, that task would keep her busy for _years._ Or she could put people to it, constant work would keep people from chafing at close quarters. Then again, the areas around the forges were plenty big, there might be no disagreements of that sort at all.

“Mistress Baggins?” asked Dain, sounding equally amused and concerned.

“Oh! Oh, excuse me,” she said, blushing again. “I was merely thinking of what needs to be done.”

“Plenty, but you don’t need to do it all.”

“I do want to oversee the laying of the dead. The Men need help digging enough graves, and every hobbit worth their breath knows how to dig. I would be of help.”

“Aye, but you are regent for the dwarves, not Men. We had Thorin’s permission to bury our dead in his mountain, and you can’t deny that, being regent doesn’t go _that_ far, but it would do well for you to appear where they are being laid and give your permission and blessing.”

“Does that blessing need to be in Khuzdul?”

“Not at all.” Well, that was a relief.

“I’ll head down today.” The healers were gathering again, and Bella led the way back to them. Everyone had plucked vast amounts, enough to last until every festering wound was cleansed and perhaps even beyond it. That eased Bella, and they all made their way back down the mountain.

“I must check on Thorin,” she said when they reached the camp once more.

“Of course,” said Dain. “You are quite fierce in keeping his rest undisturbed, I’ll not trouble you with my presence. But allow me to see my cousin soon enough?”

“Of course. Thank you.” The thyme could be prepared to oil or dried for tea by the healers, but she needed to be there when the gold was brought. This could only be done by Bella. If the sickness was not gone, she alone would not be harmed by Thorin. She knew this.

When she entered the royal tent, Fíli was awake, and he was not so insensible from fever. He still had one, still had cold compresses about him, but he didn’t have the look of incomprehension about him. And it was relief enough to pull a sob from Bella, rushing to his side.

“Bell,” he rasped.

“Oh, oh _Fíli,_ ” she said, eyes welling. He was awake and sensible, what a triumph that was! His fever had yet to break, but it didn’t seem dangerous anymore. Litr, who stood nearby, seemed to share that opinion. Bending over him, Bella stroked at his hair, memorizing his face, so glad to see him well. Fíli smiled up at her the same. “Your fever, it – we worried if it didn’t break or lessen, we didn’t know – oh _Fíli._ ”

He reached up with weak hands and once he held her face simply let them fall, holding on still to bring her forehead against his own, eyes closed in contentment. Bella had seen him do this with his brother and his uncle many times, and didn’t miss the importance of the action. Only when he released her did she see her tears had dropped onto his face, and she let loose a wet laugh, wiping them away.

“Why does my mouth taste absolutely foul?” he finally asked, making her smile.

“I’ve been brewing you barley water, it’s a hobbit cure for fever. No honey to add to it, though.”

“It tastes like _feet,_ ” he complained, and Bella couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“There’s a sound I thought I would never hear again,” said a familiar voice, and Bella turned to see Bofur there, smiling.

“Bofur,” she greeted.

“Bard and Thranduil are wanting to see you,” he said. “Dain’s holding them off, but best if you come soon as you can.”

“Yes, yes of course.”

“Why do they want to see you?” asked Fíli.

She looked at him and said, “Your uncle named me his regent last night. As none of you are in any state to do any leading.”

Fíli nodded slowly, and then asked, “Kíli?”

“He might not have had a fever like you, but he’s not getting on his feet any time soon.” Turning back to Bofur, Bella said, “I’ll be there soon.”

“Take your time. Serves them right, making them wait,” said Bofur, shrugging. And then he lifted his hand from which a rich necklace of gold hung, “Thought we weren’t having gold in here.”

“If we are to move into the mountain come winter, we need to know what to expect,” said Litr. “And the first real snows are any day now.”

“Gold?” asked Fíli. The fever was less, but it wasn’t entirely gone, and Bella supposed that he wasn’t entirely following what was going on was to be expected.

“Leave it with me,” said Litr. “I’ll watch them.”

“Thorin didn’t trust anyone when the gold held him,” said Bella. “He trusted only me and even that...I can’t – if he falls prey again…”

“He’s drunk enough poppy milk a cat could defeat him by now. We’ll keep the necklace here, between the three of them, and keep an eye on all of them. If the kings are calling you, best make sure we all survive the winter.”

“The Queen Under the Mountain doesn’t come when called by Man and Elf,” said Bofur, voice exaggeratedly offended. “She comes at her own leisure.”

“I am not Queen,” dismissed Bella. “Where are we meeting, Bofur?”

He walked with her to Thranduil’s tent, where she was pulled back into discussions that she swore had been repeated a thousand times by now with no variation at all.

Autumn and winter bled into each other liberally here, and there was ice enough before _true_ winter that it made Bella edgy about when it did arrive. They needed shelter, they needed food, they needed reparations, they needed plans to rebuild, on and on. Bella felt exhausted by the time she promised Thranduil that yes, by order of the regent of Erebor she would allow a handful of elves to oversee the process of dividing Erebor’s wealth to what she had promised to him. She swore she had probably promised that already, but political talks, especially these that were so tinged with desperation, seemed to infinitely loop into themselves.

She wanted to see how digging the graves was going, she _needed_ to go into Erebor and see the dwarves being laid to rest. So, with a deep breath, she turned to the mountain and headed forward, noticing Balin and Dwalin falling into step with her. She smiled to see them, glad.

“Dain’s man mentioned you’d be going down to see them being laid in stone,” said Balin. “A sound move, as regent Queen.”

“Well, I’m glad you approve,” said Bella, and it wasn’t even a lie.

The further they got from the battlefield, the less blood there was, and by the time they stepped onto the bare rock of Erebor, they didn’t leave red footprints like Bella had worried they would. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it if they did.

“There’s some things you should say,” Dwalin warned her. “Phrases.”

She felt braver with Balin and Dwalin at her sides as they made their way deep into Erebor. She hadn’t been in here since the battle, and it still felt like that hopeless dead place where Thorin slowly lost his mind, and where she had been powerless to do anything about it. Maybe soon that could change.

Down through the mountain they wound, until they found where dwarves were being lain in stone. And it was truly so, their bodies placed in niches carved out of the stone. As she approached, the activity stopped and all turned to her.

She knew, all at once, how underwhelming she was. A hobbit in a dirty dress, not the least of it the two stains from where she had strained the barley water through her skirts and dirt from digging graves. Her knees were filthy from two nights sleeping kneeling at Thorin’s side, her hair was a horror, she hadn’t washed her face in far too long. Hardly a Queen wearing the gems and gold that Thorin had once whispered that she deserved (she had felt unworthy and overwhelmed then too). But her mithril shirt gleamed under torchlight, a fichu of unimaginable worth. That would have to do to give her the confidence she supposed a Queen ought have.

“Through my voice, my Lord Thorin, Son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain, blesses you all,” she said, consciously lifting her chin and trying to speak the way Tauriel did – with absolute confidence. As if everything she said was simply fact. “And by my own, I the same. We heartily mourn every death, and wish each fallen all the glory we can afford. They will be honored in Erebor, for it was by their aid this mountain will be restored. The highest honors we will give, and their memories shall be passed to all who live within these halls.”

She had whispered that to herself dozens on times on the way down, and her voice only shook a little bit. Really, she thought, Smaug ought to be _more_ frightening than speaking to dwarves who were burying their dead. But Smaug at least would kill her and have done with it, these dwarves could do a lot worse than simply eat her.

They nodded to her, and turned back to the grim business of laying their dead in the stone. As they did, Bella nodded to herself and turned and walked away, feeling jittery and weak. “That went poorly, didn’t it?” she whispered to Dwalin, who smirked at her.

“Went fine, I think. You said all the words,” he said.

“Said all the words, as if that’s all I needed to do!”

“You’d be surprised how much of a ruler’s duties are simply saying the words.” Bella thought of Thorin and threw Dwalin a disbelieving look. His smirk didn’t go away.

“I’m glad you have such high esteem of our king,” said Balin. “You did _fine,_ Bella. Not perfect, but no one expected you to, you are a hobbit acting as regent for a dwarf, no one expects you to know all the customs.”

“I’m glad I underwhelm,” said Bella caustically, finding it easy to do such a thing now, with members of the Company and knowing somewhere above Fíli’s fever had broken. Climbing from the depths of the mountain and talking, it felt like any other day on the journey over, and it was only when they emerged blinking in the late afternoon sun that Bella remembered where she was and what she was doing.

She’d have to walk back into the bloody mud and for a long moment, she thought _I can’t do it. I can’t go back. I can’t._

“Bella?” asked Dwalin in that gently gruff way he had, and Bella closed her eyes a long moment before saying,

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just…I’m fine.”

Neither of them believed her. Bella didn’t even believe herself.


	2. The Belly of the Earth

The necklace had not woken any madness in any of the heirs of Durin’s line. They added a goblet, and no change was found. A small pile of gold ended up there, and they were unchanged. Kíli actually argued about its being there in an undertone to Óin, glancing worriedly at his uncle, which was proof enough. So Óin and Litr and Dain and Bella agreed with relief that they could move inside the mountain.

The Men were all buried by the time the frost set into the earth, and the injured were being carefully brought through the gates of Erebor, residents of Laketown not far behind.

Thorin and his nephews were loaded onto carts pulled by rams, and Bella sat perched on the edge of the one that carried Thorin, easing him when the jostling motion made his wounds ache. The Company walked about the three, protecting them as though any foe remained. Fíli had Óin keeping pace beside him, while Litr hurried along near Kíli.

The horses were wary of going below, but below was the only place warmth was. Rams, however, hopped easily along. The wounded were carried in litters carefully as was possible. Bella would not be separated from Thorin and his nephews, though she did not bear their weight. As the dwarves led the way down to the forges, she could hear the Men gasping and crying out at the horde of gold, at the majesty of the mountain.

Let them gasp, she thought. Let them be amazed at what Thorin reclaimed for his people. Come spring, when they leave and his people return, let them treat the dwarves with all the respect and dignity they are due.

The royal tent was already pitched down by the forge, and a flurry of dwarven healers ensured that the King and his Princes were not suffering overmuch for the move. Bella wanted to watch over them, but as Balin reminded her, she was the regent of this mountain. She had to oversee the move.

It was no more difficult than seating a wedding, she told herself a thousand times. Though she hadn’t been called upon to help do that in an age.

There were four forges lit by Smaug and if need be more could still be lit. The royal tent was in the center and it held, significantly, four beds. Ignoring that, Bella directed Dain to erect his nearby, the dwarves would center around there. The Men would be next to them, and the small group of elves would be kept away from the dwarves on the far side of the Men. And even then, the horses needed to be blindfolded and lowered down by ropes. Apparently, the dwarves had done such things before (“Pit ponies,” Bofur had cheerfully told her, “they’re common in the coal mines.”) and lent a hand while Bella simply watched frozen in horror, terrified to see a horse dropped.

It took all day, and by the time everyone was in their tents in the warm surroundings of the forges, Bella was exhausted. At least Thranduil was gone and now there were only two rulers she had to deal with now.

“I grew up hearing of Erebor’s fall,” Bard told Bella, standing and watching their people erect tents and rough stables, carrying heavy loads of all that they might need for the winter. “I knew it was a kingdom of dwarves. I never imagined…this.”

“None of us did,” said Bella, before frowning and amending. “Well. Some of the Company did. This was their home, after all.”

Bard shook his head almost in wonder, head tilted back to look at the vast reaches above them and to know these were only the forges for smelting and heating the mountain rather than individual use. What must it have been like, to grow hearing tales of the kingdom under the mountain and to look at it and doubt?

“Those tales you heard,” said Bella. “I think I should like to hear them myself.”

“Children’s tales. I told them to my own children.”

“Well, perhaps I’ll ask them.” Bard smiled at her longwise, and Bella felt better. Now that his people were sure to be fed and warm this winter, Bard seemed like he would become a dear friend. He seemed more reasonable than Thranduil ever had, probably because he had been of the common folk not a month past. Dain was friendly only because Thorin was his family, but Bard didn’t have to be anything more than polite to survive wintering in Erebor.

It certainly bode well for Erebor’s closest neighbor.

Bard eventually parted to tend to his people, and Bella set about doing the same. Dwarves of the Iron Hills were as moved as the Company had been, entering these halls, and more than a fair few thanked Bella for letting them stay.

“Winter is coming outside this mountain, you think I would send you out into the cold?” she said, shaking her head at the dwarf who thanked her. “A hobbit never sends anyone out into the cold against their will.”

Later on, Nori would laugh and tell her _that_ was why she was being hailed for her generous hospitality.

Bifur found her walking about among the dwarves, making sure they were settled, and followed silently at her back. Only when the last set of brothers had their tent set did she turn to him. “What is it?” she asked.

She didn’t speak Khuzdul, but she didn’t need to, to be fond of the dwarf before her. He simply jerked his head, and she fell in step beside him, unsure where they were going. When they arrived at the edge of the line between Men and Elf, Bella saw why. Tauriel was there, silently sitting by her own small tent and staring in the direction of the dwarves, her eyes flicking to Bella and Bifur soon enough.

“Tauriel!” greeted Bella.

“Belladonna Baggins, Regent Queen Under the Mountain,” she greeted, voice strained and polite. “By order of King Thranduil, I have been exiled from the Greenwood and from my people until such a time as I express regret of my actions. I have entered your realm without permission, but I ask you hear my plea for asylum.”

“What? He _exiled you?_ Because of _Kíli?_ ” asked Bella, staring at her. “Of course you’re welcome here! What sort of – on the edge of _winter!_ Where did he expect you to _go?!_ Goodness, what…” she trailed off, taking a deep breath. That sort of indignant yelling could cause political incident and they had _just settled_ the last one. “Of course you can stay here, Tauriel. I will not pretend to speak for anyone else, but _I_ at least will welcome you.”

“Thank you, my lady.” There was more ease about Tauriel then.

“He didn’t expect you to come here and be welcomed, did he?” asked Bella softly. “Threatening you with exile on the edge of winter with a Desolation at your doorstep – he thought to force your hand, didn’t he? That to save yourself you would give up on loving him?”

“Elves often counsel not to find love in other races. For they will die, no matter in eighty years for a human or two hundred for a dwarf, and then we shall fade in turn. I believe he thought he was doing me a kindness.”

“I’m sure he did,” admitted Bella. “If anyone gives you trouble about being here, send them to me and I’ll tell them off.” Tauriel smiled a bit at that, and it became more real when Bella added, “And come petition me again in the royal tent, I’ll sneak you in to see Kíli that way.”

Bifur smirked at that, and Bella rolled her eyes and said, “Yes, I _know,_ you can leave off about it.” He laughed then, and wrapped an arm about her shoulders, walking friendly through the camp of Men back towards the dwarven tents.

Thorin was awake and irate at the idea that he had been _carried_ down here, but at least he was sensate. Óin and Litr had been weaning him off the poppy milk, too much of it and he might become immune or else dependent on it, spending the rest of his life desperately demanding its effects the way he had gold. So perhaps it was only the pain that made him mutter darkly about the indignity of being carried.

“Well, would you rather freeze outside?” demanded Bella, hands on her hips and frowning at him. “Because that’s your other option, you know. The frost set in and winter is at our door. You were carried in, or you could still be crawling your way in and we’ve done enough to keep you alive and start you healing that I’m not allowing you to take the other choice!”

They stared each other down a long moment before Thorin cowed, bowing his head. Bella nodded, brow still furrowed. She loved the dwarf in front of her, she wasn’t going to argue that, but sometimes he made her so cross.

“Stubborn dwarf,” she said, sitting on the stool that stood between his bed and the empty fourth bed. Hers, when she retired to it. “Gold might not be worth more than your honor, but your honor is not worth more than _you._ Not to me.”

“How do you manage that I can’t rightly be mad at you?” asked Thorin, looking up at her.

“Well it’s either that or have myself strangled and nearly thrown from battlements.” His face pinched in shame, and Bella shook her head saying, “I know you were not yourself, Thorin. You pulled yourself from the depths you had fallen to, _you_ did that. You pulled yourself out from it, and by the _hills,_ Thorin, that is something you should be _proud_ of.”

“I hurt you.”

“Well, no worse than my own incompetency early on this journey did. Really, Thorin, if you’re going to use me as a stick to beat yourself with, I’ll get up and walk away.” Thorin looked at her, and then to where she was cradling his hand in hers, idly caressing his palm. The meaning was clear, he didn’t think she would. “Oh hush.” But she didn’t let him go, and within minutes he had fallen asleep again.

The healing tent had plenty work, and Bella stepped in only to coordinate their movements through the injured, minor as that was, and to help settle a few minor disputes. Nothing but arguments, she told Ori when they walked side by side to Dain to talk about burying Erebor’s Honored Dead.

“Not _just_ arguments,” said Ori. “That’s what Thorin did, even as an exile king. He heard and settled disputes. That’s what any king does. You’re already leading.” Bella didn’t have time to say anything to that before they were at Dain.

Now that they were inside the mountain, there were two things that needed doing; closing the gates for winter, and burying the Honored Dead. “I don’t understand why we have to close the gates,” said Bella, and Dain smiled at her, quite like the Company did when she didn’t understand something about the world outside her smial. It didn’t feel patronizing now, it felt fond. As if it said _it’s alright, I’ll tell you._

“If the gates aren’t closed, any number of beings could come wandering inside,” said Dain. “That goes from wolves to deer to even some last orcs. At least one of them was probably coward enough to flee.”

“Oh. That…that does make sense.”

“We’re dwarves, to create is to be. We’ll get it sealed,” promised Ori, smiling at Bella himself.

“Good,” she said. “And the dead. How…how different will it be to your dead? I’m sorry, that’s awfully rude of me –”

“A fair question,” interrupted Dain, a look on his face saying _it’s alright._ “It will require much more ceremony. If Thorin or one of his nephews can manage to be present at all, that would be ideal.”

“We could probably get at least one of them up. Fíli’s fever isn’t totally gone, out of danger or not I’d like to have him rest until he’s done burning.”

“Having you and Thorin side by side would be ideal,” said Ori, before glancing at Dain, worried of overstepping.

“You’re right, lad. King Under the Mountain and his regent lady? It would be best.”

“Thorin is only awake for very short amounts of time,” said Bella. “He fades too quick for ceremony.”

“Then we will honor Erebor’s dead when he has strength to see it properly done,” said Dain. Bella nodded, and felt in her heart an ache she had grown deeply familiar with on the course of this adventure – being lesser. She strove not to show it, and apparently she did a good job of it, for no one commented upon it.

Dain and Bella went together to order Erebor’s gate sealed for winter, Bella imploring the dwarves of the Iron Hills to do her this great kindness, and their Lord asking them to aid the Lady of Erebor.

Almost immediately volunteers stepped forward, and Bella reminded herself to make her way up to see them at their craft, and instead hurried back to the dwarven encampment, hoping to see her friends and see how they fared. She had been so concerned with everything else, how could she have forgotten her dearest friends?

The Company was well, and now that everyone was settled in Erebor they complained less of the journey between the mountain and the tents. Bella could see a sort of forced happiness about them, for the Company were the ones dealing with the darkness that dwelt in these gilded halls. She’d help how she could, Bella decided, and let herself smile and enjoy their company. They were let in a few at a time now to the royal tent. Now that Fíli’s fever was broken there was less worry over disturbing his rest, and it seemed to cheer the three within to see them.

“Better than looking at Óin’s face every day,” murmured Kíli, grinning even as he faded towards sleep. None of them were ever awake long, and when they were their voices were quiet and soft, too busy healing to be their normal boisterous selves. Fíli, for his part, rarely did more than smile and watch those he knew and loved move around him, he was still exhausted from the fever.

Still, his smile was a little brighter at Bofur’s jokes, Kíli managed a quiet laugh that only sometimes broke off into a wince of pain at some of Nori’s stories, and Bella, perched on that little stool by Thorin’s head, often laughed just the same.

Finally, Litr shuffled the dwarves out, citing it was time to change bandages. Bella helped as she always had, fetching new bandages and bearing the old ones away. Thyme oil was used on all wounds now, staving off infection. She felt pride in that, somehow. _She_ had picked that, _she_ had found it on the mountain. An herb of healing that grew on a mountain a dragon had ravaged and burned. The mountain trying to heal itself, she thought to herself.

“It’s growing late, my lady,” said one of the dwarven healers.

“Oh, not so late,” dismissed Bella. But it was true, the children of Men had been sent to bed long ago, and plenty of adults themselves. “Besides, there is still work to be done.”

“Aye, and work tomorrow too, my lady.” He wanted her to sleep, Bella realized, and went back to the royal tent, seeing the healers settling in beside their respective charges. Bella’s stool beside Thorin was, however, untouched, which made her happy in a way, to see that she could be beside him.

Tomorrow she would see about the wall and check that all was well the next day, that steeds were yet able to be fed. There had been talk about letting the goats out, that even in winter the Rams would be able to find things to eat where the horses would not. She should see about that. The Secret Door they had entered through, it should yet be open, she supposed, and perhaps goats could be let out there. She should check on that, perhaps after the closing of the gates.

Three healers were there for the three heirs of Durin, but three also stared Bella down until she removed her boots and lay in her cot.

She also needed new clothes, she thought. Another task for the next day.

* * *

Bain insisted on tagging along with Bella up to watch the gate close – in fact, many of the children of Men did, an odd parade forming as she walked through Erebor. She knew the ways around by now, and took a slightly more winding route for the children to gasp over massive sculptures of ancient dwarves, to point out the gems set into the very ceiling (made to sparkle like the night sky when torches were lit, she had been told on the road, when Balin could be made nostalgic and reminisced about parts of Erebor).

Finally, they came upon the gate, where dwarves were laboring. The air outside the mountain felt no different this far away from the forges, and Bella thought it lucky that everyone was wintering below. There were repairs to be made upon the shafts that let the scorching air from below heat what was above, but none had been made. It was an early priority, though.

“The Lady of Erebor is here!” cried out the Master of the Project upon seeing her, and activity didn’t _stop_ , it grew even _faster_ somehow.

“I came to see how things were going,” said Bella. “And to thank everyone for doing this.”

“Erebor was the home of many of our fathers. We were born during the Wandering, or after they settled in the Iron Hills. The Lady need only ask us to repair the home she helped win for us again, and we shall do it.”

Bella blinked and managed, “That’s hardly _necessary._ ”

“It is our honor to do so.”

“Oh. Alright.” She wasn’t exactly sure how to tell him not to find honor in something, even in a basic task she hadn’t even known they would need to do.

“Lady! Lady!” cried one of the littlest children, running up to Bella. “Look, a bird got in!”

It was true, a small bird was fluttering around inside the mountain. It was a small, unremarkable thing, but that Bella had seen Gandalf whispering to its kind before. The wizard had set off not long after the battle wore out, and Bella narrowed her eyes at the bird, wondering if it had a message, somehow.

The children seemed delighted by it, and probably for good reason. A Dragon had come and burned their homes and killed many, and then a war was raged at their door with elves and dwarves and the horror that was orcs. No wonder they found joy in this little bird that fluttered about and occasionally perched, singing its heart out when it did. The dwarves were trying to herd it back out rather than seal it in the mountain with them all winter, and the children laughed to watch an attempt at herding out a bird before helping best they could.

Finally, the bird fluttered down to Bella (probably because she was standing still, unlike the dwarves and children) and sat upon the hand she lifted on instinct. It looked at her a second before peeping a few notes and taking off again, this time straight back out into the sky.

The children looked at her like she was a creature from a fairy tale, and she huffed and said, “If you don’t chase things around, they tend to figure out you’re safe enough.” Privately, she was pretty sure that that _had_ been one of Gandalf’s birds, probably reporting back that she wasn’t dead and was no worse fed than before.

It wasn’t like she was going to start to complain about the lack of decent meals _now,_ right after a Dragon and a battle and who knew what else.

Still, the youngest children looked remarkably enchanted, and Bella told herself it was because they hadn’t met a hobbit before her and because Gandalf was sending meddling birds, but she couldn’t seem to impress that on them. Almost helplessly she turned back to the Master of the Project and asked, “How long until the gate is closed for winter?”

“It will take a fair while,” he warned with a warm laugh in his voice, amused by the awe the littlest children had for her. “We do want to get _out_ at the end of winter, after all. It’s a little harder than just sealing it up. We’d have to smash it open with the bell again.” They both looked up at the bell hanging above them at that. What a grand dramatic moment that had been. No one wanted to repeat it.

“Do you think a few weeks?” finally asked Bella.

“No more than two, I think,” said the Master, nodding to himself. “Yes, two weeks. Barring any unexpected circumstances.” Bella nodded.

“Thank you again, for doing this,” she said. “Will you pass my thanks to everyone working?” He nodded, and Bella started the long process of gathering up all the children of Men and taking them back down below.

She took them a different route this time, away from where any of Erebor’s Honored Dead yet lay, and took them to a hall with mirror-flat gold on the floor. She remembered this, the gold poured as she and the Company tried to drown Smaug and as he escaped to bring destruction to their home, but the children didn’t know that, just running amazed over a floor of gold.

“I thought it was a gold _roof,_ ” said one of the boys nearby Bella.

“Why did you think that?” she asked, curious. “I’m from the West, a place called the Shire, I hadn’t heard a single story about Erebor before I met the king.”

The boy looked disbelieving at that but said, “It’s in that song.” And then he sang a snatch of tune, “With golden roof and silver floor.” Frowning down at the gold under his feet he said, “I guess they got it flipped.”

“There are other Dwarf kingdoms, you know. Maybe the golden roof is somewhere else.”

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t look convinced at all.

Just then a pair of girls cried out, and Bella turned to see them holding something and fighting over it. Marching over, Bella knew she wasn’t anyone’s mother, but she had been known for being decent with fauntlings if nothing else, and called, “Now what are you two fighting about?”

“Mela says she found it, but I saw it first!” said one of the girls.

“Not true!” protested the other, Mela. “I saw it first!”

“Saw _what_ exactly?” asked Bella. It was the nameless girl who handed it over, and Bella nearly dropped it soon as touched it. It was Thrór’s crown, the one Thorin had worn when at his worst. The only reason she didn’t throw it as far away from her as possible was because there were children staring at her, and even if some (many) were taller than her, she was full grown and had to set an example for them. “This,” she started, and had to clear her throat, “this is the crown of Erebor. It belonged to King Thrór before the Dragon came, and it was left here when the dwarves had to leave. So now it belongs to Thrór’s grandson, Thorin.”

“He’s your husband isn’t he?” asked a little girl.

“Ah, no. No, no we’re not…no.” Bella cleared her throat and said, “No, we’re not married, but he was hurt very badly in the battle, so he can’t rule. Can’t seem to stay awake more than ten minutes at a time, in fact. But because he says he’s _going to_ marry me, I’m the one in charge.”

“So it’s your crown.”

“No, no I’m afraid it’s still his.”

“Yeah, Queens get their own crowns,” said a boy, as if it were common knowledge. Bella was saved from telling him off mocking the girl when an older boy flicked his ear instead.

“You should bring him his crown again, Lady,” said a little girl. “How’d we know he’s king without it?”

Bella thought about Thorin being almost ridiculously majestic in even the most absurd moments, and smiled down at her and said, “Oh, you’ll know.”

“You should bring it to him anyway,” said an older girl. “Or else someone might steal it.”

Bella didn’t want to tell these children that it was probably abandoned here for good reason, that Thorin probably discarded it and would not want it back, and _couldn’t_ tell them of the madness that had gripped him and had brought him to put it on in the first place. So instead she smiled, nodded, and carried it with her as she began to get the children to leave behind the golden floored room.

When they finally returned back to the forges and the tents, she heard more than one child talk about how the song got it flipped. She wondered what song it was. It was to Dain she went with the crown, finding him in discussion with his men, but dismissed them to greet her pleasantly.

“And how is the door going?” he asked.

“The estimation is two weeks,” she said. “But the children stumbled across…well, on our way back, we passed through the hall where we spilled quite a bit of molten gold and they seemed to have a wonderful time with it, except…well…”

“Aye?”

“Two things, really. First, the children were talking about the song getting it mixed up with the roof or something. And second, we found Thrór’s crown.”

Dain’s face grew solemn at the sight of the crown in her hands. “It is his. It belongs to Thorin.”

“He wore it only the in the depths of madness. I fear that he would not look upon it at as a symbol of kingship but that of madness. His own or his grandfather’s.”

“I will hold it. Either he reclaims it, or he will forge his own crown.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” His face cheered, a hefty amount of false cheer put into it as he said, “Now what was that about a song?”

“There was a boy who complained that the song was wrong, that it was supposed to be a golden roof, not floor.”

“With golden roof and silver floor,” sang Dain, the same song as the boy from before. “Was that it?”

“Yes! Exactly that!”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard it. The line of Durin reclaiming their lost home and you never heard the _Song_ of Durin?”

“Too many orcs, trolls, and spiders, you know. Not really enough time for singing,” she said, making light of the horrible creatures that really still gave her nightmares.

Dain smiled at her, and nodded his head towards the flap of his tent. “Walk with me, would you?”

They walked side by side through the tents, nodding to those who called greetings, Dain with dignity and Bella with a rather nervous politeness. She wasn’t used to anyone seeing her and calling out, “My lady, good day!” She knew how to respond to Miss Baggins from neighbors and madam from the little fauntlings who wanted to ask for a story or the like from her. Not “my lady.”

“You’ll be answering to ‘your Majesty’ soon,” said Dain with a fond smile, chuckling as she blustered quietly. Chuckling still, he continued on, and then began to sing. His voice was not the deep mystery of Thorin’s but it was fine and pleasing to the ear nonetheless. “The world was young, the mountains green, no stain yet on the moon was seen no words were laid on stream or stone when Durin woke and walked alone.”

A dwarf nearby tilted his head to hear it and joined, voice a rough baritone, “He named the nameless hills and dells, he drank from yet untasted wells.”

All around, dwarves were joining the song, the chorus of voices not perfectly in tune and not perfectly _together_ but everyone knew the words and everyone sang with the confidence of long known songs. “He stooped and looked in Mirrormere and saw a crown of stars appear as gems upon a silver thread above the shadows of his head. The world was fair the mountains tall in elder days before the fall of mighty kings in Nargothrond and Gondolin who now beyond the western seas have passed away, the world was fair in Durin’s day.

“A king he was on carven throne in many-pillared halls of stone with golden roof and silver floor and runes of power upon the door. The light of sun and star and moon in shining lamps of crystal hewn undimmed by cloud or shade of night there shone forever fair and bright. There hammer on the anvil smote, there chisel clove and graver wrote, there forged was blade and bound was hilt, the delver mined the mason built. There beryl, pearl, and opal pale and metal wrought like fishes’ mail. Buckler and corselet, axe and sword, and shining spears were laid in horde.

“Unwearied then were Durin’s folk, beneath the mountains music woke. The harpers harped the minstrels sang, and at the gates the trumpets rang. The world is grey the mountains old the forge’s fire is ashen cold. No harp is rung, no hammer falls, the darkness dwells in Durin’s halls. The shadow lies upon his tomb in Moria, in Khazad-Dûm. But still the sunken stars appear in dark and windless Mirrormere, there lies his crown in water deep ‘til Durin wakes again from sleep.”

Bella was speechless to hear the whole of the dwarves it seemed sing this song of long forgotten ages past. This song of when Durin was king, the same Durin her boys claimed descendance from. She had heard dwarves singing in her smial, it had been that that had pulled her to go on this quest. But to hear all these dwarves sing was something beyond even that. “Golden roof and silver floor,” she whispered to herself.

“It lays in Khazad-Dûm sure as anything,” said Dain, looking in the distance as though he could see these fabled halls.

“And now Erebor has its own golden floor. A mirror of Moria?” She felt silly, but still Dain smiled at her.

“How came the children of Laketown to know the Song of Durin?” wondered Dain aloud.

“Dale stood on the gates of Erebor,” said Bard, walking through the dwarves and approaching. “We heard the songs of Dwarves as you heard those of Men and passed them to our children.”

“Bard,” greeted Dain. “What business do you have here among the dwarrow?”

“I came to speak to both of you, imagine my luck to find you together.”

Bella looked between the two. What business did he have with them? What had she forgotten?

“The healers looking on a Man named Hama, his wound is festering and is not responding to many of their treatments. We must have the worst talk.”

“May a Man be buried in Erebor,” murmured Dain.

Bella froze, eyes wide. She was Thorin’s regent, they called her the Lady of Erebor for lack of official title. It would be she they asked, wouldn’t it? Dain didn’t have power here, it would be a matter of principle to ask his opinion as a dwarven lord, but it would be Bella herself who had final say and decision, horrible as it was.

Not an hour ago there was a bird sitting on her finger and singing at her, not a half an hour ago children were playing on a floor of gold, not five minutes ago the dwarves were singing a song of Durin together. And now how awful the day had turned.

“Come to the royal tent,” said Bella. “I will not have this talk in the open like this.” It seemed the fussiness that had garnered her much ribbing on the journey was well received when she spoke with the King’s Voice. The three returned to the royal tent, and found Fíli and Kíli asleep, while Thorin was awake, though more than a little muddled. Litr was with him now, speaking softly to him.

“Thorin,” called Bella, going to him immediately, taking her stool. He turned to her, just as confused as with Litr.

“Bella,” he murmured. But it seemed he would say no more, simply staring at her with confused, wondering eyes. “Bella.”

Dain cleared his throat, and Bard was feigning interest in the tent around them. Bella’s fussiness that won her respect as regent also made her incredibly aware that they were staring at her.

“I thought we were weaning him from poppy milk,” she said to Litr, even as she kept his hand in hers, another on his cheek. She could at least _sound_ proper, not like she had a soppy, adoring dwarf staring at her.

“We are. You’ve arrived just after he’s had a dose, however,” said Litr. “He’ll be asleep soon enough.”

“Thorin, I wish you had your wits about you. I could do with having you about now.”

“What for?” asked Thorin. “How must I – must I save you?”

“I don’t need _saving,_ Thorin.”

“Point me to the foe,” he insisted, struggling to sit up.

“There are no foes, Thorin, now lay back down!” fussed Bella. It was easy to push him back down, and Litr helping was probably to make Thorin feel better about himself than anything else. “No foes to defeat, nothing to save me from. I just need you to go to sleep, so that you may heal. I need you _well._ ”

“My lords, might you step outside with me a moment?” offered Litr, which was a relief as Dain and Bard left, leaving Bella alone with her dwarves.

“But you need me,” murmured Thorin. “Bella…”

“I need _you._ Not your sword nor your shield. Only Thorin. Only you. Now please, my love, go to sleep. You’ve given me a task and a half being regent for you, and I’ve an awful hard decision to make here in your place.”

“Bella…”

She frowned down at him and sighed, reaching to stroke his beard as she granted him a kiss. He tasted of poppy, and Bella was careful not to lick her lips. He lifted his head to chase after her when she pulled away, but her hand on his chest kept him down. “Sleep, my love.”

There was nothing for it, she’d have to humiliate herself. Who knew how close to the tent Litr had taken Bard and Dain? Were they listening to hear when Thorin slept? She’d just have to risk it.

Her father had taken over many of the lullabies in her youth, and she remembered him dearly for it, those warm sleepy evenings when Bungo set down his pipe and sang his “favorite girl” to sleep. And it was to those memories she cast as she sang Thorin down as well.

“A Hobbiton Maid once strayed out to Bree, although with her nature it did not agree,” she sang. “And she wept and she sighed and so bitterly she cried, ‘Oh I wish once again in the Shire I could be. Oh the Oak and the Ash and the bonny ivy tree, all flourish at home in my Shire Country.’

“‘How sadly I roam and lament my dear home where lads and young lasses are making the hay. Where the bells they do ring and the little birds they sing and the maidens and meadows are pleasant and gay. Oh the Oak and the Ash and the bonny ivy tree, all flourish at home in my Shire Country.’

“‘No doubt if I please I could marry with ease, for where maidens are fair many lovers will come. But the one that I wed must be fine Shire bred and must carry me back to my Shire Country home. Oh the Oak and the Ash and the bonny ivy tree, all flourish at home in my Shire Country.’”

Somewhere through the song Thorin had slipped to sleep, and Bella didn’t fool herself into thinking it was because of her singing.

A sigh and a last kiss to his cheek before wiping her lips clean of any poppy, she went to the entrance to the tent and waved Dain and Bard back in. “He’s asleep now, so we’ll have to keep our voices low,” she warned. “Let alone the boys.”

“Those boys are older than you,” reminded Dain.

“Oh, when they act like men then I’ll _call_ them men.”

“And speaking of Men,” said Bard, voice yet soft.

“Hama.”

“Hama.” Bella offered Bard one of the stools, which he took, grateful not to keep his head so awkwardly bent. “His death is not _certain_ but the move down here did not seem to help matters. It is best if we agree now, just in case.”

“You have no _proof_ he’ll die.”

“But no proof he’ll live either. Mistress Baggins – _my lady,_ I know this is not an easy decision, may a Man be buried in dwarven kingdoms, but it is one we need to decide.”

She looked to Dain who just blinked back at her. He was not king here, he had no power, not really. “Lord Dain,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she was. “Has there ever been precedent of this? To your knowledge, has anything like this ever happened before?”

“Men have _died_ in dwarven kingdoms, aye, but I cannot think of one who was not taken home to his family to be buried according to his customs,” said Dain. “Perhaps Balin knows.”

“Yes, yes, let us have him summoned.”

“Step outside and command him brought, then, my lady.”

She felt unsteady as she went to the entrance to the tent and found Dwalin there, sitting guard over his king and princes. He was there often. “Dwalin,” she said gratefully. “I need you to find your brother for me, I need him.”

“What is it you need him for?”

“Dwarven law.”

“Him or Ori, then, if I can find him.”

“Yes, either, please hurry.”

“Aye, I’m going.” Despite how gruff he sounded, he still went and at a brisk pace, too. Bella remembered he was the first to arrive at Bag End, and how when he had seen how frightened she had been to see an armed man shadowing her door how he had tried to put her at ease by showing no interest in her whatsoever, not so much as looking at her as he asked after supper. It was a good memory, in retrospect, and she held it in her heart as she turned back.

Inside, Bard and Dain had their eyes trained on her. Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli all slept. It was her alone who could make this decision and she hated it.

She had to decide the fate of a Man, had to decide if he was allowed to be laid to rest here and if not, what would they do? The mountain would be sealed in two weeks, would she be caught in the state of having to _hope_ that he would _die_ in time to be buried outside? Would she enforce them to leave even in the middle of winter to bury him? Would she have him buried in Erebor? Would that make the dwarves turn on her for letting an invader in? Would Thorin wake and hate her? Thorin could hold onto his hate for a long time, she had seen that with elves, would he hate her once more? Clear-eyed this time, not brought on by dragon sickness?

“How is he injured?” asked Bella instead, looking to Bard. “Hama. How is he hurt?”

“I would bring you to him, were we not waiting on your scholars,” said the man.

“No one appreciates having people they don’t know come stare at them when they’re not well.”

“He’s not exactly conscious.”

His family was watching him waste away. And here Bella thought that _she_ had it hard, with her boys.

“Tell me then. Since we can’t go to him.”

“He took an arrow to his arm, it probably pushed some of his shirt into the wound,” said Bard. “He was found on the battlefield, the healers think the mud made it fester.”

That awful, awful, _horrible mud._ That red mud, that bloody mud. It brought nothing but death and clung to one’s feet. Bella was sure that her shudder was obvious, but no one commented on it.

“An arrow wound,” she said to herself. “From which army? Lady Tauriel saved Prince Kíli from an orc’s arrow, perhaps she could help again.”

“It was not from an orc,” said Bard. “It’s not poison that lays him low.”

“Could they not just amputate?” asked Dain. “Cut off the arm?”

“He could die of blood loss that way, or losing the limb could just cause his body to shut down.”

“But it is an option.”

“With equal chance killing him as helping him. Lord Dain, even amputation does not make this discussion unnecessary.”

“They’ve been using thyme oil?” asked Bella.

“Yes, washing it with every bandage change. They feared it was from sharing bandages, even boiled ones, and shirts have been ripped to provide fresh ones. It isn’t helping.”

“What about garlic?”

“Garlic?”

“I know for fact there is garlic in our food supply. We can treat festering wounds with garlic. It might help if thyme cannot.”

“My lady, I am not asking for your advice in treatment, only what you will allow.” There was tightness to Bard’s face. “If you cannot tell me, then wake up your king and ask him.”

“I am not going to sit here and talk about a man as if his death has already happened!” hissed Bella, very aware of her volume and the dwarves sleeping around her. “If you speak of death you _invite_ death. I never declare anything dead until it well and truly is. Even the sickest plant can be nurtured back.”

“A person is not a _plant._ ”

“Exactly! They’re worth more than talking about them as if we’re deciding where to plant them. Hama is not compost, he is a man who could yet get well.”

“And what if he doesn’t? What if he only worsens and dies? What then?” challenged Bard.

“I-I don’t know!” said Bella, her voice raising slightly. “I don’t know, is that what you want to hear? Thorin named me his regent but I don’t know what I’m doing! I don’t have the answers, not for this, not for anything! The most leading I have ever done is Hobbiton’s ‘Best Garden’ competition!”

“My people are not your garden!” roared Bard, his voice shocking awake Thorin and the princes. But he didn’t seem to notice. “We are a people _you_ brought death and ruin to! We are not something you will get a _prize_ for having in order!”

“My lady,” said Dain, but Bella was on her feet now, her voice getting just as loud.

“I know that! I know exactly what I’ve done! I am _trying_ to help but I haven’t ever done anything like this before! I don’t want this man’s life and death on my shoulders!”

“Neither do I!”

“Bella –” said Fíli, his voice raspy.

“Leading isn’t just taking children to look at pretty ruins! It’s hard work! You can’t just get by with letting people bow to you and do the hard work for you!”

Bella puffed herself, ready to have a good, long shout, before she saw Thorin trying to get up, looking wild and held down by Litr. She looked at him and then at the princes, Kíli already nearly on his feet and glaring back at Litr who was glaring at him to get back into bed. Fíli’s arms were shaking where they were trying to prop himself up.

She looked back at Bard and hissed, “Get out. Get out right now. I will speak to you when I can bear to look at you once more. Get out.”

Bard looked as pinched as Bella felt, but he did leave. Dain hovered awkwardly, but Bella didn’t have space for that. Instead she turned to Thorin and moved to him.

“Lay down, for goodness sake!” she fussed.

“He yelled at you,” said Thorin, eyes wild but glazed.

“And I gave him a rather good tongue lashing myself, I think. Now lay down. Fíli, Kíli, you too.”

“He doesn’t get to say that sort of thing about you,” protested Kíli.

“Do not make me come over there.” Finally, he lay back down, and Fíli’s arms had let out too, all three laying down even as Thorin looked distantly furious. “Fíli, go back to sleep. I don’t know how you’re awake. Kíli, if you’ve made yourself bleed again I will formally take Tauriel’s petition to stay outside this tent and you won’t see her until the winter’s over so help me. Thorin…Thorin, just – just rest. Lay easy.”

“You’re upset,” he said, intelligently.

“Of course I’m upset! You’ve landed me in a fine mess, naming me regent before something like this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t…Thorin, I can’t handle it if you apologize right now. So please, just stay silent.” He obeyed, and when she opened her eyes after breathing herself down, he was staring at her with mournful eyes. “Sleep. Rest. You need it if you’re ever going to be on your feet again. Litr, look after them.”

The tent very cautiously opened to reveal Balin and Dwalin peering in. “I couldn’t help but notice Bard like a storm on his way back to the Men,” said Balin.

“Balin, Dwalin, just…Dain, talk to them. I need…I don’t know what I need, but just…”

Dain nodded, and Bella looked between her dwarves, all looking at her with worry, and strode out herself, huffing the way she did when at her angriest. Funny, that had once been because Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had implied something nasty or tried to honestly take her silver spoons. Not because the leader of Men implied she was doing a poor job as regent for a dwarven kingdom so rich and mighty it had an honest-to-goodness _solid gold floor._

She might laugh, were she not so irate.

The dwarves didn’t call out greetings, and part of her worried that they saw her upset or had _heard_ it, but most of her thought _good. Leave me alone._

The healing tent was as it ever was, and Bella found the closest human healer and said, “I need to see Hama.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Hama. A Man who was wounded by an arrow. He might yet die.”

“Oh. Oh, I don’t…I’ll find someone.”

“My lady, are you well?” asked a dwarf.

“I am as well as I possibly can be, thank you.” She was spared any questions by another Man coming and leading her to a tent close to the healers. Close because of his wound no doubt.

Hama was an older man, with his family in the tent, their faces exactly as Tauriel had once said. Grieving before grief was necessary. When they looked at her, there was a moment before they realized who they were looking at.

“How hurt is he?” asked Bella.

“Very badly, my lady,” said the man’s spouse, a man called Durward. “We’ve washed his wound so many times and used thyme oil as well. Others are healing from it, but Hama…”

“What’ll we do if he doesn’t get better?” asked the woman who had been introduced as Hama’s sister, a baby at her breast. She was lovely, with skin dark as the warm shadows the forges cast, but pained and grieving already.

“I may be regent of Erebor, but that is a decision for dwarves, not hobbits,” said Bella. “All I will do is try and make sure that question does not need to be answered.”

The wound was ugly, that was no surprise. That thyme wasn’t helping was. Still, Bella declared that they should try garlic, instead of using thyme over and over again. Striding to make the paste herself, she found Bombur, who spoke to her softly even as he found garlic for her. “They say that the king of the Men has insulted the Lady of Erebor. That Thorin will declare war in your name.”

“Oh none of that,” said Bella. “I had a shout and Bard had a shout – perfectly understandable with such close quarters.”

There was plenty of room by the forges. Neither of them commented on it.

“I’m sorry Bombur, you don’t deserve me snapping at you. It’s terribly unfair of me.”

“I think it’s a miracle you haven’t snapped before now,” said Bombur. “There’s a lot weighing on you.”

“Thorin needs to rest and heal, you should see him, he’s…he needs me. So I can do this.”

Bombur just looked at her with sad eyes and said, “It’s like before.”

“What?”

“You’re…When Thorin was unwell, you took it all on yourself. And now you’re doing it again.”

“When Thorin was unwell, I was the only person he didn’t think was going to betray him,” said Bella, fingering at the mithril shirt she yet wore. It was warm against her skin, but it was metal and she could feel it rubbing at her skin, doubtless turning it red from abrasion. “I was the only one who could make him eat or sleep at all. I rather had to, if we wanted him around at all. And he named me his regent, I have to lead in his name. I have to.”

Bombur looked like he wanted to say something else, but Bella didn’t give him a chance, just offering a wavering smile and striding back to the healing tent.

Bofur came and joined her soon after, with Nori, and both just hung at the edge of the tent, watching her create the garlic poultice, and trailing after her to Hama’s tent. They didn’t say anything, but Bella felt them at her back. They didn’t feel like the true companions the Company had become, they itched like unfriendly eyes.

She remembered, very deliberately, all her best manners for dealing with the Sackville-Baggins family, and applied them immediately. She was polite with Hama’s family as she had the garlic applied, told them to refresh it and when they ran out to let her know so she could make more. She took their resigned thanks (they didn’t believe he’d live any more than Bard had) and walked briskly away.

She really needed fresher clothes, she felt a horror.

Bofur and Nori were still at her back. And even when she walked on the edge of running, they were there. Kíli had managed to keep himself from bleeding, but Thorin hadn’t. Not a surprise, since he had been adamant to “protect” her even before she and Bard had had a go at it.

At least the bleeding was less, now. Too much blood made her sick, now.

“Really, serves you right,” said Bella, even though her heart wasn’t in it. What was it Dwalin had said? She was saying the words?

Litr spoke to her about yelling near the patients, voice soft but commanding. They had all been injured in warfare, too much shouting too close could bring back those memories, with Thorin drugged on poppy it had probably made him think the enemy was near and that he had to fight or else be slain. Kíli had been coherent, but Fíli, who was now laying with distant, unseeing eyes, had suffered a truly horrible nightmare in the time she had been away, the shouting making him think of the battle, no wonder Kíli barely took his eyes off his brother even as his head nodded towards sleep.

“I’ll meet in Dain or Bard’s tent from now on,” said Bella, already thinking about how to possibly get any clean (or cleaner) clothes. The washing. Had anyone thought of how to do the washing down here?

“Good. And my lady, I think you have two people who want to talk to you,” said Litr, nodding towards Bofur and Nori, who were looking rather wretchedly between Bella and the three invalids.

She took a breath and looked at them saying, “You can help me figure out how we’re to do the washing down here.”

“Think there might be something a little ways this way,” said Bofur, jerking his head, and the three walked through the dwarven tents, until they were leaving it behind them. Bella remembered running through here in lost terror. Not like Dwalin, Balin, and Thorin, who had grown up here and knew exactly where everything was. It had been terrifying, running from a dragon, but amazing, watching Thorin move with such utter _confidence_ here. She wanted him well so he could enjoy being home without the horror of a dragon or the dark veil of sickness.

“..always keep water nearby,” Nori was saying. She wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “It’s around here somewhere.”

“Might have broken,” Bofur added, but his eyes were firmly on Bella. “You alright?”

“Yes, yes of course I am. Water. We need running water,” said Bella. “Where would that be?” Nori was giving her a look now.

“Bella, you’re taking a lot on yourself,” he said slowly. “It’s alright if you can’t do this too.”

“I can’t wear this dress another moment, I will go mad,” she said. “It’s filthy with sweat and barley and…and mud.” It wasn’t red. It wasn’t red, she reminded herself. “I need it washed long ago, and everyone will need to do some washing at some point this winter, we cannot exactly wear the same clothes until spring.”

“I’ll go find you something to wear while you’re washing then,” offered Nori, before hurrying back towards the tents. Or maybe he was going up into Erebor.

She couldn’t wear some antique dwarrowdam dress, she couldn’t. She hoped he was looting a shirt and pants from some dwarf, she had done that before, on the journey, and that would be fine. If she wore some ancient finery from Erebor, she would be like Thorin had been – wearing his grandfather’s clothes and descending to madness.

No, no, that was unfair. She shouldn’t think that.

Bofur’s arms were around her, steady. She hadn’t realized she was shaking.

“Bard took it out of you, didn’t he?” asked Bofur, his usually jovial voice soft. It reminded her of when she had set her cap on leaving, when they had been in the mountains, when he had wished her all the luck in the world in a genuine voice, just before the floor opened and goblins got them.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.

“You’re doing a great job, lass. Honest, you are. You got the thyme for the oil, you brewed barley water and that broke Fíli’s fever, that lad could have burned himself to death if not for you. You got everyone down here, the gate is being sealed to keep us safe, there’s lots I could tell you that you’re doing right.” She shook her head wordlessly, before burying her face into Bofur’s shoulder.

“I wish Thorin was well,” she whispered.

“Aye, lass, I know you do. We all do, but I know you probably wish it most of all.”

“He’s the one with right to Erebor. He’s the one who can make these choices.”

“What choice was Bard asking you to make?” Bella had a feeling he knew, but told him anyway. “I don’t envy you one bit, lass. That’s a hard one. Even if Thorin was awake and doing this himself, it’d be hard.”

“I’m not even a dwarf,” she whispered. “I’m just a hobbit.”

“You’re not _just_ anything. You’re Belladonna Baggins, of Bag End! And…what did you call yourself to Smaug?”

Bella cast her mind back to that awful terror that made her body cold when she heard the dragon stir, the kind that made her both hyperaware of what she was doing and saying and also like her body and voice were out of her own control. It was an awful thing to remember, but it was done, not like the creeping horror of knowing blood was seeping into the ground outside and how it followed her in that Man’s wound even into the depths of the mountain. “You know,” she finally said, voice small, “I can’t seem to recall.”

Bofur didn’t say a word for a while, before he said, “It’s late, lass. Go get some sleep, Nori’ll bring you some clothes for tomorrow, we’ll sort out the washing.”

“Is it late?” she murmured. It could not have been _that_ long since she took the children up to the gate, since the bird flew away into the bright sky.

“Aye, late enough anyway.”

The royal tent loomed in front of her like responsibility; what if Fíli had another nightmare, or if Kíli did? What about Thorin? But there was a fourth bed in there, and it seemed quite nice.

Óin was there, and he look one look at her before nodding towards that quite nice bed. She pulled off the dirty dress and let the mithril fall in a ringing pile next to it, and in only her shift she climbed into bed and fell asleep within breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs are The Song of Durin and The Oak and the Ash (with some minor lyrical adjustments)


	3. Garden Songs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could make some pithy comment about how I have way more time to read/write fic now, but in all seriousness, I hope all of you and all of your loved ones are healthy and safe, especially those who are elderly and/or immunocompromised.

When she woke, she really did not want to get up. There was a lingering anxiousness from her dreams, though she remembered very little of them beyond the concept of that awful mud, and it made her feel tired even after having slept. She wanted to roll over and dreamlessly sleep forever. Smaug had, apparently, slept for at _least_ sixty years straight. She hated that dragon much as anyone, but it did seem wonderfully appealing, sleeping like that.

But she had duties, and so she got up.

There was a pile of clothes at the foot of her bed, with her mithril shirt folded atop them. It was a dwarf’s pair of pants and some antique dwarrowdam’s bodice. _Good thinking, Nori,_ thought Bella. If he had been any less clever he might have fetched a shirt without thinking about support. The mithril she deliberately set aside. She didn’t want to be dressed as if she expected battle. At least when under a dress it wasn’t so obvious.

Thorin and the boys were asleep, and that eased her, as she dressed.

She really should talk to Balin about precedent of a Man buried in a dwarven kingdom. In a more sensible state, she could even ask Thorin. She’d have to apologize to Bard, most likely. And to Dain. Oh, the washing. She wondered in Nori and Bofur really _had_ done anything about that. But her filthy dress was gone, so maybe they had.

She took a deep breath and saw Óin was sleeping in a chair between Fíli and Kíli. A well of affection rose in her, and she thought to herself she could put off her many looming duties for a little bit, and do a turn of kindness for one of her dear friends at the same time.

“Óin,” she whispered, barely more than a breath. “Óin, wake up.” He woke with a grunt, eyes swinging to his patients first, and then focusing on Bella. “Go lay down and sleep. I’ll watch over them now.”

“You should sleep yourself,” protested the old healer.

“Go find your brother and go to sleep. I’ll be fine. Think of it like taking watch.” He huffed, but was smiling as he left, Bella sinking into his chair.

Her dreams were unkind places to be, but sitting here, looking between her boys, they felt distant, as though they couldn’t touch her. Not here, watching over Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli. Watching over them she was strong, in the nightmares, she was anything but. She preferred this.

She ended up wishing for something to do with her hands, but it was a quiet wish. Mostly she sat comfortably, watching three dwarves sleep around her. None of them did well with the bustle of healers about them at night, only when dosed with poppy milk could they sleep at all. So, only one healer ever remained in the nights, which suited all parties well.

And now that Bella was alone with them, it was a comfort that she had no one else about.

Quiet noises came from Kíli’s bed, and Bella moved to him immediately. It seemed like a nightmare, and Bella had had enough of those, thank you.

Almost soon as she touched him, he woke, eyes wide and wild. “Shh, shh, it’s alright Kíli, it’s alright.”

“Thorin–” he gasped.

“He’s healing, he’s sleeping and he’s healing. Fíli’s alright too. His fever broke while we were still outside, he’s a little weak but we don’t have reason to fear for him either. All is well. Your family is safe, all is well.”

“Tauriel.”

“She’s going to come petition me to be allowed to stay, we talked about it. She’ll come here and I’ll allow her to stay and then you can see her. You’ll see her tomorrow, Kíli, I promise. She’s alright.”

The dream must have been distressing, for he didn’t seem to want to close his eyes and go back to sleep. Bella could relate. She pulled the chair beside him and said, “Now, why don’t you tell me about Tauriel, hmm? How on earth did you win her favor while stuck in jail?”

He gave a little smile at that, still with the edges of fear about him but it was softening, thinking about his elf. Kíli really was truly in love, Bella thought as he spoke with a voice soft from both the strain of healing and from love. There was adoration on his face when Tauriel wasn’t even here.

He told her of how they spoke through the bars of his cell, of how she had asked after his little runestone, how she had told him about the starlight. A dwarf really didn’t care _much_ about stars, not like the elves did, but he could see how he might come to care, if they made her so happy.

It was a great indication of how truly he loved Tauriel, Bella thought, if he was telling her of these things without once joking that she had fallen in love with his great charm and good looks.

“Well, it sounds like we’ll have to have a long talk with your uncle, you and I,” Bella said when he subsided, looking dreamy-eyed to think of his love. “I wager we’ll get her leave to stay in the mountain however long she’d like.”

“I’d like that,” said Kíli.

“I’m sure you would. Now, if Tauriel is going to be here tomorrow, you ought be well rested for her. Back to sleep now, Kíli.” The fear came back to his eyes. He didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to risk those dreams again. From the sound of it, it had been a dream of watching his uncle, brother, and beloved all fall in the battle, it must have felt so real that when he woke, he feared it had happened.

“I’m not tired,” he insisted instead of saying any of that, but Bella knew better. Still, the prince could be stubborn as anything, all of the dwarves could, so she just nodded and said,

“Well, you’re welcome to stay up with me. Rather boring, though, watching people sleep.” Kili just grunted, looking rather determined to stay awake.

Smiling, Bella settled back into her chair, glancing over Fíli and Thorin, watching Thorin’s deep breaths, counting the rise and fall of his mighty chest. And after time had passed enough so as not to be obvious, Bella sang under her breath, under no impressions that she was any sort of songbird.

It was a garden song sung to all young girls in the Shire, and even though Bella’s mother had never sung it herself, it didn’t mean Bella didn’t hear it and know it. All hobbit women knew it, it seemed. Or at least a version of it. There seemed to be as many different verses as there were mothers. “Come all you fair and tender girls who flourish in your prime,” she sang softly. “Beware, beware, keep your gardens fair, let no man steal your thyme. Let no man steal your thyme. For when your thyme is passed and gone, he’ll care no more for you. And every place where your thyme was waste will all spread o’er with rue. Will all spread o’er with rue.

“The gardener’s son was standing by, three flowers he gave to me. The pink, the blue, and the violet true and the red, red rosy tree. And the red, red rosy tree. But I refused the red rose bush and gained the willow tree that all the world may plainly see how my love slighted me. How my love slighted me. For woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wine. And from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find. He takes what he can find.”

About halfway through, Kíli had fallen to sleep, and Bella smiled to see it so. “Do they really think that, in the Shire?” asked a soft voice, and she turned to see Fíli looking at her with such sad eyes.

“Think what?” she asked, just as soft as she moved to him. “Are you well?”

“No worse than ever before. But the Shire. Do they really think that sort of thing?”

“What sort of thing, Fíli?” asked Bella. Goodness, would Thorin wake next?

“That thing about men just…just _taking_.”

“Oh, Fíli. It’s just a garden song. It’s just to warn girls into taking care choosing their lovers. Not to…not to give too much to someone if they only take, that sort of thing. And that’s hardly the only version. There’s one that says that we must only wait, and things will grow anew, another has a whole verse about planting an oak tree where the thyme once grew.”

Fíli let off his apparent worry over the Shire to glance meaningfully towards where his uncle lay, and Bella shook her head, coloring even as she scoffed at that. “I don’t like thinking that you grew up hearing that. That you…you looked angry by the time Kíli and I arrived at your home, but Dwalin says you looked terrified when he arrived. Our women don’t fear a thing from our men. I don’t like that you were afraid of us.”

“I’m hardly frightened of you now. I’ve faced a Dragon alone, Fíli. I think a strange dwarf on my doorstep is hardly enough to make me blink anymore.”

“But that you were ever frightened of us at all…”

“Fíli,” she started, and stopped. “Is this noble self-punishment something everyone in the Line of Durin does, or did your uncle have too much of a hand in raising you?” He blinked up at her in surprise, but at least it shocked him out of guilt. “Now you know full well that a hobbit is a hobbit no matter where you take them or what you do. I’m still missing those nice brass buttons I lost in the Misty Mountains, and you know that well because you teased me about it for ages. Hobbits don’t _leave_ the Shire, those that go to Bree are looked at oddly at home. I never so much as saw a dwarf but passing through; even if I were a man, I would have been rather terrified at the sight of one so heavily armed at my door.”

“So you…”

“If I was ever frightened of you, it was the sort any respectable hobbit might have at strange, heavily-armed dwarves appearing at their door and I certainly got over _that_ in favor of frustration by the time Balin arrived. So don’t go torturing yourself about it, Fíli.”

There was relief on his face, and Bella’s heart swelled for this noble dwarven prince. What a dear young man he was, worrying so fiercely for an upset that had long since been overshadowed. He slipped back to sleeping not long after, and Bella glanced at their uncle, almost resigned that maybe he was awake too. But no, all three were sleeping, which suited Bella just fine.

“Too much excitement tonight,” she sighed, and settled to keep watch until she needed to be working again.

* * *

Litr arrived a few hours later, and with his arrival Bella got to her feet and headed out to business. Balin and Dain had been working about dwarven precedent about Men being buried in Dwarven Kingdoms and they told her over breakfast that it would honestly be best if they could rouse Thorin.

“Not that we don’t doubt your judgment, mind,” said Dain, looking sincerely apologetic. “Only, you aren’t a dwarf, and your decisions might be considered…”

“I understand,” said Bella, nodding. “Well, when he’s coherent you can ask him and that’s that weight off my shoulders.”

“It seems to me that Bard only asked you because you are regent,” said Balin. “Probably expected you to ferry it to Thorin, not try and take it on yourself.”

“Hardly a good regent that just passes on the work of kingship. The very point of me is so that he can rest and recover.”

“Well, for something like this, it’s probably best that you just pass it on.”

“I’ll inform Bard that Thorin will decide when I see him today. I should probably apologize for shouting.”

“If you ask me,” said Dain, “he ought to apologize to _you._ He’s a guest in your mountain and the gate isn’t shut yet.”

“Dain, I am not sending anyone out into the winter to fend for themselves!”

“You’d be in your rights to decide that, though. Has no one explained what power you hold, as regent?” The last was directed at Balin, who frowned right back at the Lord of the Iron Hills.

The rest of breakfast was spent telling Bella about all the power she now wielded, which was quite a lot, really. She could decide if anyone was allowed inside the mountain at all, and could banish people from it at will. She controlled not only her own share of Erebor’s wealth but as regent while all three royals were unable to perform their duties controlled _theirs_ as well. Four fourteenths of anything didn’t seem like much, but Bella remembered the indescribable piles of gold in the Dragon’s horde, let alone what gems and silver existed, and realized she was probably the richest living being east of the Misty Mountains and possibly even a bit farther west than _that._

“Oh dear,” she said, glad she was sitting down.

Balin and Dain weren’t finished. She held the power to declare war, she was the First Voice of the people she ruled – if she decided terms then it would take Thorin himself to countermand them. She could declare the elves of Mirkwood welcome under the Mountain and almost no one could say a word about it without risking her ire (they talked about “her ire” as though it was a physical attack, like she would attack someone with Sting). If anyone disobeyed an order of hers and she deemed the disobedience grave enough, she could order execution.

“In some cases, you might perform them yourself,” said Balin. “But seeing as you are not a dwarf, those would be waived.”

“What cases would those be?” asked Bella faintly.

“You are regent to a very wounded king. If action was taken against him, you are considered his protector,” said Dain, voice gentle as Balin’s. They both seemed to realize how much this was and were doing their best to gentle it. “And as his protector, any executions of those who would do him harm would fall to you.”

“But we are among friends now,” said Balin. “Especially once you make peace with Bard about that whole business yesterday.”

“What about Bard? I mean…him and his people. I understand I can make all these…these decrees among dwarves, but Men and Elves?”

“They are all here on your sufferance alone, Bella,” said Balin. “Legally, you wield the same power over them as you do dwarf, so long as they live inside the mountain.”

“But that’s ridiculous! Hobbits do not hold those passing through the Shire to our laws.”

“Hobbits are not dwarves.”

“Yes, somehow I’ve figured that out by now, Balin.” She sighed. It was only just past breakfast and here she was snapping. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re allowed.”

“You are being too understanding. I don’t trust it,” said Bella, smiling at him.

“Aye, you’ve discovered my plot,” said Balin, voice as ruthlessly flat as one could make it with a smile creeping onto his face.

Bella chuckled and then sobered, saying, “I really should go talk to Bard. And see if Bofur and Nori really did figure out the washing. And Tauriel, I promised Kíli she would come petition me today, formally.”

“One thing at a time,” encouraged Dain. “Make certain everyone is settled and the gate is sealed, then we can start some of the harder work of rebuilding.”

“Bard first, I should think,” said Bella, and she rose at that, tugging her bodice into place. It was cut for a dwarrowdam, not a hobbit, and though it was not that great a difference, the shape of it certainly was. Where she expected it to sit did not match with reality, and she found herself constantly tugging at it.

There was great activity among the dwarves that morning, and Bella wondered after it. She stopped one of the dwarves and asked where he was hurrying to, and he smiled at her, a little baffled and said, “You gave orders to have the water system rebuilt. So that we have water for drinking and washing in.”

Well, it seemed Bofur and Nori took her asking them to work out something for the washing to its extreme. “I was not aware that _you_ were working on it, Master Dwarf, nor that everyone here had to.”

“Well, we’re petitioning for a position in the works. Don’t like idle hands, my lady.”

“Oh, and I’m keeping you. Tell Bofur and Nori that I held you up, and that Bella Baggins of Bag End would very much like them to fix my plumbing.” He nodded, looking a bit confused but seemingly aware that it was a signal that he well and truly had met her, and bowed to her (she was never going to get used to that) before hurrying off.

Don’t like idle hands. She’d have to find tasks to keep them busy. And for the Men as well, Thorin could probably forgive the hands of Men helping out about the mountain. Elves, not so much.

The tents of Men were much quieter, and the activity of the dwarves seemed to intrigue them. Indeed, many stood outside their tents or closer to the border between the two to watch the flurry of dwarves all rushing to petition a place on the newest project.

“That’s the Lady of Erebor,” whispers sounded from around her. “The Queen! Why do you think she’s here?”

“Lady!” cried a little voice, one of the children she recognized from the trip up to the gate running up to her. It was a little boy, not yet breeched, and he flung his arms around Bella, making her smile. “What’re they doing?”

“Do you mean the dwarves?” she asked, and he nodded insistently. “Well, there used to be a system of plumbing, it brought water here so in case anything went wrong with the forges they could be put out. But they broke sometime after the dwarves left. If Smaug broke it or time, I don’t know. So the dwarves are all hoping to get chosen to help rebuild it. Dwarves don’t like idle hands, you know, so they all want a part of the rebuilding.”

That seemed to satisfy the little boy, and he thanked her in that hasty way children did before running off, likely to tell his friends. It was a very minor setback, but it did make starting off again towards Bard’s tent a little intimidating. She had gotten her courage up and now it was faltering.

Still, it needed doing.

Bard was still eating breakfast with his children, and Bella very nearly backed out but that he waved her to sit with them. There was not another place to sit, however, which seemed to give them each pause.

“If anyone knows the importance of food, it’s a hobbit,” said Bella. “We tend to eat seven times a day, you know. Finish your meal, I will wait.” The idea of seven meals did seem to startle the Men, but they let her step back outside, listening to the distant sounds of dwarves arguing full-voiced over joining in the project of bringing water. She chuckled, shaking her head. And she thought _thirteen_ dwarves could be loud.

Ori had already been busy writing up the contracts for the gate-workers, he’d have double that with this new project. Maybe she should find other scribes who could help him. That had been a shock, that the _writer_ of a contract specifically _had_ to be a scribe and that it was different from the various positions of those who _signed_ the thing. It seemed far too complicated for Bella’s liking, but that was dwarves for you, she supposed.

Finally Bella was urged back inside by Sigrid, and when she was inside, she felt somber as anything. She looked up at Bard and said, taking a breath, “I apologize. I should not have yelled at you. I have since been in discussion with Balin and Lord Dain Ironfoot of the Iron Hills, and we have decided the fate of Hama should be put before Thorin, as I am not a dwarf. We should have done that from the start, rather than shout at you.”

Bard looked at her a moment and said, “Thorin dropped the weight of the mountain on you when you were already digging graves and climbing mountains to look for thyme.”

“Hardly an excuse,” dismissed Bella. “If I can be polite to Lobelia Sackville-Baggins on Market Day after she tried to steal my silver spoons, I can hold off from shouting at you.”

The reference to Lobelia seemed to baffle Bard as much as it amused him, which she had noticed tended to be the case. Considering the man had never met her cousin-by-marriage, no wonder. Oh, silver. Well, that would be a minor project, something for her to do to busy her hands in the night.

She wondered if the dwarves polished their silver with a different recipe than hobbits.

“Let us forget it then, shall we?” offered Bard, and Bella smiled at him, nodding.

The elves had been patient, she ought meet with them, Bella thought, walking back to the royal tent. She should see if Kíli was awake, and then send someone for Tauriel. As soon as she was among dwarven tents, however, Bifur was at her side, taking her elbow and leading her off to where the dwarves had been hurrying earlier. For all that running and shouting, they certainly made decisions quickly.

“Has it all been sorted, then?” she asked. Bifur spoke in his typical clipped Khuzdul and gave a few twisty hand signals. Sounded like the hard work had been done, which was a relief.

“Ah, Bella!” greeted Dori, and Bella smiled to see him. She felt as though she hadn’t had a moment to see any of her friends in ages, and it was a joy to see him.

“Dori!” she embraced him briefly, feeling as if it had been years since she had last seen him.

“Hello my dear. I don’t know why you had Nori one of the two in charge of all this, but what’s done is done. In any case, you ought thank everyone for helping, say a few words, that sort of thing.”

“Thorin was always the one to give inspiring speeches, not me.”

“You’re not exactly trying to get anyone to rally to a seemingly impossible cause, my dear.”

Well, that was fair.

Bofur and Nori were waiting there for her, as were two dozen dwarves, and Bella felt intimidated, suddenly. It was one thing speaking to Bard and Thranduil and Dain, they were just one person apiece, but to a crowd? What an odd thing to be intimidated by, she thought. Still, she tugged at her bodice again and looked over the small crowd. “So it seems to me we’ve got a fine group of dwarves before me,” she said. “And I’m very glad you’re all so willing to help. Our scribe Ori will write up your contracts, as I’m sure was mentioned, and do feel free to negotiate with Nori about payment.”

Nori gave a squawk at that, and Dori chortled at his brother’s misfortune. The dwarves seemed quite settled with that. Bofur laughed aloud and clapped his hand on Bella’s shoulder and said, “Belladonna Baggins, of Bag End, let me introduce you to the Master of the Project, Álfr son of Falr.” He gestured grandly to the very dwarf she had stopped that morning, who bowed to her.

“I’m glad my holding you up didn’t keep you from work, Álfr son of Falr,” said Bella warmly.

“Aye, you charged me to fix your plumbing, and I’m quite set on doing just that,” said the dwarf, a smile underneath his russet beard.

“I do believe I charged _them_ with it,” she said, nodding towards Bofur and Nori. “But considering what they did, I think I trust you a bit more.”

Álfr looked rather lost, but Bofur and Nori were laughing, and that made Bella smile. She said her thanks once more, and asked Álfr to find her later and walk her through what repairs needed making once initial surveying was done. Tugging at her bodice again, she let Dori offer his arm and walked with him back to the tents.

“You’re doing very well, you know,” said Dori. Bella smiled to hear it.

“Well, I nearly caused an incident shouting at Bard yesterday, so there’s not much worse I can get.”

“Oh don’t say that. You could have slung mud at the Elf King.” Bella laughed aloud, because if she didn’t laugh she’d think about what was _in_ that mud. “And just what are you doing now?”

“Lady Tauriel is here, she’s been banished from her people and I intend to hear her petition to stay. I’ve already allowed it, but I’m going to do it formally, and mayhaps she’ll be able to see Kíli. I know that would set both of them at ease.”

“Aye, but not Thorin.”

“Well, he’ll have to start getting used to the idea _sometime._ ”

Dori smiled at her. She wondered, sometimes, how exactly the rest of the Company saw Kíli’s infatuation with Tauriel and her returning love, if they all tended towards Thorin’s views on things, or if the fact that she had saved the prince’s life twice made a difference. Dori at least seemed accepting.

“What do you think of Tauriel?” asked Bella as they walked.

“I think she’s far better than her king. I don’t know her well enough, but Kíli seems to adore her, and it’s a miracle to get that boy to take most things seriously. The fact that he takes everything to do with her so seriously…it’s a good sign.”

Well, Bella supposed, that was much better than accepting, that was outright approval.

They arrived at the royal tent, then, and she insisted Dori come inside for a moment. Fíli and Kíli were both awake and talking, their voices quiet enough not to rouse their sleeping Uncle. Upon seeing the two of them, matching grins grew on their faces. They made welcome Dori with all manner of jokes, but Bella looked at them separated to allow space for the healer sitting between them, and turned to Litr.

“Litr,” she said softly, making him turn from winding old bandages. “I think the princes would be eased if…”

Litr looked at the two who were grinning to hear Dori recount how Bella had deliberately chosen Nori to suffer through the haggling of wages, and nodded. Bella smiled, glad he understood.

It was something of a process, getting Kíli out of his bed and moved over to Fíli’s without worsening either of their injuries, but when the brothers were together, they just clung onto one another, abruptly forgetting anything to do with Dori’s presence and any tales he might have of his own kin in favor of whispering into each other’s shoulders. They had been so aware of each other’s pain and injuries, they had dreamt horrid nightmares of each other’s death, things that could only be eased by feeling living flesh under one’s hands, but were denied that because they had to stay abed.

It would probably be harder separating them, thought Bella fondly, watching the princes hold onto each other, breath shaky from emotion. Tauriel would have to wait.

Instead, Bella set out to the elves, because really it was the polite thing to do.

The envoy of elves that stayed under Thranduil’s orders numbered four; three women and one man. They accepted the place Bella had set them to, separated from the dwarves by the entire expanse of Laketown’s tents. They seemed even to find it preferable.

When Bella approached, it was one of the women, Feranheil, who greeted her. The bad blood between Dwarf and Elf didn’t seem to touch Bella, despite being regent for a Dwarf King, which confused her, but she wasn’t exactly sure how to ask about that. Instead, she let herself be welcomed into the tent the elves had erected for business, having four smaller tents for their own use. It was nice not to have to talk business where invalids lay, she’d have to see what they could do among the dwarves.

“Belladonna Baggins,” greeted the only man, Denerath, smiling to see her and standing from where he had been in discussion with Rathtyen, who smiled the same to see her. The fourth, Eilonhuin, was not among them, and Bella wondered where she was. “We were beginning to think you had forgotten about us.”

There was a smile on his face, but Bella wasn’t entirely sure what was jest and what was earnest. “I do apologize,” she said, just to be safe. “The gates needed sealing to keep out any number of beasts, and then the water system needed fixing, we’ve only just got the workmen for that set up. And then Bard asked after permission to let one of his people be buried here in Erebor if they should fall to their wounds and that is a massive debate, really.” She should check on Hama, see if the garlic was helping.

“Peace, Lady of Erebor,” laughed Rathtyen, her pale hair flicking as she shook her head. “We know how much work you have taken on.”

“Eilonhuin will want to be here when we discuss business,” said Denerath. “Please, sit and wait with us.”

“Where is she?” asked Bella even as she took the offered chair. It was just a little too high, all Big Folk chairs were, and the elves all politely looked away as she got herself settled rather than force her to feel the humiliation of being watched. Really, if not for the whole imprisoning them business and Thranduil’s rather shaky claim on anything beyond the White Gems of Lasgalen, she’d quite enjoy them.

“I do believe she’s speaking with Tauriel,” said Feranheil.

“Lady Tauriel has my personal permission to be in the mountain, we will make it formal as soon as is quite possible.”

“Be at peace, my lady, Eilonhuil and Tauriel were dear friends in the Greenwood, she is merely seeing a friend.”

“Oh. But she was banished, and you are standing in your king’s place.”

“His Majesty banished her for her love of the dwarf prince out of kindness,” said Rathtyen. “As well you know, we do not age and die, but his highness Prince Kíli _will._ We encourage our kind not to love where there is only pain, such a decree was meant to encourage her to set aside the love that would doom her to Fade and sail.”

“It still seems plenty unkind to me,” said Bella. “He might have _spoken_ to Tauriel about it, rather than make it political.”

“The actions of any ruler, even if personal, become political,” said Denerath. “You must be becoming aware of that yourself, my lady.”

She thought about the business with Bard, and how Balin and Dain had told her all her powers that morning. “Well, bit by bit.”

Just then, an elf with brown hair streaked through with golden tones arrived, Eilonhuil, and she greeted Bella with all the fondness the others had. Honestly, and Thorin hated elves on principle?

“Are we to begin now?” asked Eilonhuil, taking a seat among the rest.

“Well, at least the very beginnings of it,” said Bella. “Becoming regent was rather sudden, I haven’t come fully to grasp with all that is in my power to _do_ and _give_ , exactly. So we can start at the very beginning, but not end.”

“Nor do we expect to end. We saw the horde same as everyone, it will take much time before all is settled,” said Rathtyen.

“So. The White Gems.”

“Yes, those have been denied His Majesty many long years,” said Feranheil. “They are his rightful property, denied him by King Thrór in his greed.”

“Gold Sickness, I believe, and the dwarves would thank you for it.”

“Was that not what your king suffered as well? My, what a family.”

“Thorin was suffering from _Dragon_ Sickness. When Smaug broke free of the mountain to destroy Laketown, I will have you know not so much as a _thrush_ entered those gates because the miasma of the Dragon. _That_ is what affected Thorin. Thrór’s illness was _Gold_ Sickness. I admit I don’t understand the difference, but it is there. To say Thrór, who was unwell, was only _greedy_ is a disservice to the king and will not win you any friends among the dwarves.” The elves peered at her, thoughtful, distant looks on their faces. Bella, for her part, found herself blushing to have been so forceful with them but didn’t rescind a word.

“In his illness, then,” said Denerath. “King Thrór denied His Majesty his rightful property. We would ask it returned.”

“The wealth of Erebor is vast and Dragons don’t much care for organization systems,” said Bella. “It might be an Age before we find it.”

“Ah, no need for such vast estimations,” said Eilonhuil. “Certainly with so many dwarves who can do such works as build a new gate within two weeks sorting the gold can be easily done?”

That was a challenge and Bella knew it. Thank goodness she was a _hobbit_ and did not have the sort of dwarvish pride that would make her promise it done within the month. You could have all the pride in your tomatoes as you please but nothing was going to make them grow any faster than they wished. The patience of the earth, one of the first things a hobbit learned. Surely the elves would know that too.

That was the thing about elves, she had learned between Rivendell and Thranduil’s palace, they could be peaceable and untouchable, they could laugh and sing, they could tease and joke, they could be petty and proud. For ageless beings, they weren’t so different from anyone Bella had ever met. And they seemed to take her treating them like anyone else with great amusement.

When the necessary projects of fresh water and protection from wandering creatures were completed, or if the dwarves who had no employment grew restless, then they would begin sorting through the wealth of Erebor. Dale needed money to rebuild, and if they found the White Gems of Lasgalen in there, then all the better.

Bella’s offer of her share of Erebor, and even the Arkenstone, was now on shaky ground, as it had been made before she was regent and she hadn’t _repeated_ her offer necessarily, but to a people who did not use contracts like dwarves, one’s word stood. So. Bella had caught herself in a sticky place. But one these four were being remarkably more gentle with than their king. Not to mention that Thranduil had sent food to the _Men,_ and what the dwarves ate from that would have to be repaid and the Elven King was apparently of a mind to _vastly_ overcharge, given what Bella understood.

She found herself wishing Thorin was here. His word as King would override hers, and then the weight would be taken off her. But she was already doing that with Hama’s fate, she couldn’t do it again.

When at last the four elves bid her fond farewell, Bella already had a long list of things in mind to deal with.

The first was to stop by Tauriel’s tent, which she found empty. Well, she couldn’t begrudge her wandering, not in her precarious position. She had yet to be _formally_ allowed to stay in Erebor, after all. Maybe she wanted to get away from it all. Maybe she wanted to see this magnificent mountain, plenty others did, after all.

The horde had been blocked to all but the Company for now for a reason.

So, Bella continued onwards. She had to ask directions once, but found her way to the tent where Hama lay. Durward greeted her at the entrance to his family’s rather small home, looking surprised to see her. “I don’t mean to take up all your time,” said Bella. “I merely wanted to see how your husband is doing.”

“Who is there?” whispered a voice, barely audible, but Durward spun and rushed back in. Bella peered in after to see Hama vaguely awake, looking confused but very glad to see his husband all the same, a smile on his face even as his brow was knit. She felt her heart break with gratitude to see it so.

“Hama, my own,” said Durward, voice gentle the way everyone’s was with someone so ill. “this is the Lady of Erebor, she reigns in the Dwarf King’s stead, as he is too injured to do it himself.”

“You…aren’t a dwarf,” managed Hama.

“No, I’m not,” agreed Bella. “I am a hobbit. Belladonna Baggins, at your service.”

“And you…rule the dwarves.”

“Thorin named me regent as he cannot rule himself right now. I only speak with the King’s Voice, I don’t have any power of my own.” Hama nodded vaguely, before turning back to his husband, preferring to look at him until he fell unconscious. It was the sort of thing she had come to recognize in her dwarves, and just smiled as Durward made sure his husband was comfortable before turning back to her.

“It’s the garlic you prepared,” he said. “He hasn’t been this awake in…in ages.”

“I’m very glad to have helped,” said Bella, quite earnestly. It had been a treatment made out of desperation, unwilling to see anyone else die and horrified to have to decide if he would be allowed be buried in the mountain or not.

And even though he was awake now, she tried not to let hope fill her heart too much. He could still perish and she knew it. No amount of sheer hope could guarantee recovery. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a little flutter. “I’ll mix more garlic for you,” she said.

“Oh no, my lady, we can’t ask anything more from you,” said Durward.

“Nonsense. I’ll make sure you have more on hand and teach some of the healers what I made so they can help in my stead in case I get too busy.”

And she went to do exactly that. That Hama was awake and coherent, even if he didn’t remember anything he said from time to time he woke, was better than he had been. The healer who had been looking after him, Landon, was more than happy to see what Bella had done to wake him, and promised to keep her aware of Hama’s state.

Now that was done, she went to the royal tent, hoping that by now Balin and Dain had spoken to Thorin about the question of Hama’s fate, hoping to tell them he was awake and they didn’t need to worry so dearly about it. Instead she found Ori lying in wait with massive stacks of contracts for her to sign.

“You’re the regent,” he told her. “These are contracts you’re giving them, really.”

“Does _every_ job require a ruler’s signature?” asked Bella hopelessly.

“No, just the ones you’ve ordered. And so far you ordered the gate closed and the water system repaired. If you put other people in charge, they’d be the ones signing.”

“Aye,” agreed Óin, voice soft in favor of the sleeping royalty. “That’s why the kings keep councils and guilds, let someone else do the signing!”

She smiled to hear it, and took the great pile of contracts to the small table that had been set up in the corner, usually filled with any number of tinctures and salves and a bucket of water to quench thirst, or a meal a healer set aside for the moment to aid their charges. Once they were set down, she embraced Ori fondly, something he reciprocated happily. “Soon enough we’ll all be seeing each other more often than we are,” he offered, and Bella just squeezed him tighter a moment before letting him go.

Once she had been put off by how endlessly intimidating the physical affection of the dwarves seemed to be, foreheads touching (or bashing), clapping each other on the shoulder, pulling each other into strong embraces and who knew what else. Hobbits weren’t _that_ expressive, and Bella had been a little worried by how very forceful it was. And now here she was, holding onto the dwarves with all the power in her arms.

Ori sat with her a while, showing her the terms of each contract, the payment negotiated and so on, before pointing where on each contract she should sign. By the time she was finished, her hand was aching and Dain was stepping into the royal tent.

“Ah, Bella,” he greeted, voice almost a whisper to overcompensate for the wounded around him. “Just who I wanted to see. Might I trouble you to join me in my tent?”

Bella’s stomach growled just then and she said, “You may if you have food.” He chuckled and nodded, waving her on. To one of his men who trailed nearby he gave the order to have something to eat brought for the Lady, and Bella blushed even as she walked with him to his tent.

“Now, Balin and I did speak to Thorin earlier. For a few short bursts at a time, rather, his healers seemed rather insistent he not force himself to stay awake,” said Dain.

“About the case of Hama?” asked Bella. “Bard and I agreed not to bear grudge over that, by the by.” It was then that a meal was delivered, just a bowl of soup and a bit of bread, but it was enough to quiet her stomach. As she ate, Dain spoke,

“I’m glad you came to an agreement about it. We, however, did not.”

“No?”

“No. There’s no precedent that we know of for a Man to be buried in a Dwarven kingdom. Of course, if we’re very lucky, we’ll have to make a decision about non-dwarves being buried here anyway.”

“What do you…oh.” He meant _Bella._ He was talking about _Bella’s death._ When it happened, the Queen Consort of Erebor should be buried in the mountain, so a decision about non-dwarves would have to keep that in mind. What a sobering thought, considering all the death that just happened.

“Thorin doesn’t like thinking about your passing, you see. Especially now. So, no decision has been made.”

“And you…want me to talk to him about it?”

“No. I’m hoping very hard that that Man recovers and we don’t have to have this discussion for a good many years.”

“Well, Hama is awake, you’ll be glad to know.”

“Is he now?” there was that bright hope that Bella winced to see.

“That he’s awake doesn’t mean he won’t still die. But the garlic poultice I mixed seemed to help. I would suggest we don’t _hope,_ though. Not until he’s truly declared well by the healers.”

Dain nodded, brow furrowed in thought. “Well, if he dies, then we’ll have to talk.”

That sort of dismissal, that a man’s death was a condition, Bella _understood_ it, really she did, but it still made her skin crawl. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to survive facing another death. If absolutely anyone else needed her blessing before being put into the stone or someone needed a grave dug, she would scream and cry and tear at her clothes and transform into one the mad-women of the stories. She already knew she looked a fright, barely washed as she was.

Dain seemed to see the shudder that passed through her, and cautiously clasped his hand on her shoulder. It was just on the far edge of too-tight, but that discomfort was love, from the dwarves Bella knew, and so she welcomed it. “I don’t relish thinking of death anymore than you do,” he said, voice gently gruff.

“I know,” said Bella, closing her eyes and taking a breath. “I know.” A shuddering breath later, she said, “I need to go for a walk. Just…to step away.”

“I would suggest going up to the gate then. That way no one can pull you away from it. A ruler can only walk from one thing to the next. If you happen to be less than truthful about what that next thing is, you can get away with it.” It was said in the undertone of a secret, and it made the corner of Bella’s lips twitch.

“Then up to the gate I go,” she said.

It was a miracle she managed to go alone, usually someone would have sidled up beside her, but just to be alone soothed the ragged ends of her nerves. She did walk up to the gate, and caught the workmen at their lunch, hurriedly insisting that if anyone knew the value of a meal it was a hobbit and none of them should stop eating for her sake. She coaxed them into eating, sitting beside the Master of the Project (one Nurum son of Vilum) as he talked about how the project was going.

First, they had created a barrier wall to keep away wandering wildlife for when they needed to rest, and only once that was built could they start on the gate. Winter was pressing in ever faster and they’d like to have the gate shut before it got too bitter cold. The beginnings of winter and the end of autumn were cold enough as it was, come full winter they wanted this well and done.

“Still two weeks, my lady,” he informed her. “We’re right on schedule, really.”

“I hope it doesn’t start snowing before then.”

“We’re sturdy, my lady. We may prefer to be done by then, but we’ll still work.” Bella offered a smile at that, thanked everyone for their work, and headed back into Erebor proper.

And if she wandered a bit, then there was no one to say anything. In truth, she just wanted a little bit of quiet, and there was nowhere better to get it than formerly abandoned city. She just had to be aware of where they had found the Honored Dead and avoid them. Honored though they may be, she couldn’t handle seeing them.

At last she found herself in the long emptied guild halls, the kind that were protected from ruin because they were deep in halls to small for a dragon to get to. There was a storeroom here that was plenty large, and she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t stumbled onto a marketplace of sorts instead. But on the shelves were blackened objects, hard to see in the gloom. Once there had to have been light here, but none survived.

She picked one up, and felt the cool heft of metal sitting in her hand the way nothing had since she left Bag End. This was a silver candelabra, one with impressively twisting arms. Here was some of Erebor’s long forgotten silver. And what a mess it was. She’d have to find something to polish it with and come back here. One could be Gold Sick and Dragon Sick, but she had yet to hear of Silver Sickness, perhaps no one would object to the regent taking an interest in what little restoration she herself could do.

At least until spring. Horrid nightmares about the bloody mud aside (and there were _plenty_ of those), she wanted to get her hands into the soil in that so-called Desolation. At least sixty years that land had lain fallow, it must be plenty rich and only need the vegetation reintroduced. And as awful as it was, the blood soaked into the ground would make it lovely ground for growing.

That did it. She could feel the mud on her feet, in between her toes and she dropped the candelabra, keening and sinking down to curl into herself, hand pressed against her mouth to hold in the sobs, the other hand grabbing at the boots she wore, reminding herself that no, no mud was on her feet and wouldn’t get there again.

Could she ever bear to go barefoot like a proper hobbit ever again? The thought of the answer being no made her sobbing worse, as did the thought of what if she recovered, but soon as she stepped outside into the ground and felt any sort of mud would she break down made it even _worse._ The thought of being denied the feeling of good, honest earth under her feet would make any hobbit distressed.

However much time had passed during her sobbing fit, she didn’t know. She swallowed down the tears best she could once she could. She had people depending on her, she couldn’t spend her time sobbing in dark corners. Breathing deeply and thinking to herself that she had to find Álfr and ask about the water project, really did have to get Tauriel’s presence in Erebor formally allowed, not to mention let her and Kíli see each other, and find some sort of polish for Erebor’s silver, she forced herself to her feet. Taking the candelabra with her, she’d take it to show just how much work needed doing to get silver shining again.

Stopping in the royal tent, she hesitated by the flap, because she could hear Fíli and Kíli’s voices. Not the words, but the cadences. It was that sort of talk that was doubtless private, and it meant that probably everyone else was gone or napping (really, the healers were pushing themselves too hard with all the wounded), and she was loath to interrupt that sort of talk. So instead, she went to find Balin and Dwalin, and they were both in their tent for once, and looked very pleased to see her, even if they were confused by the black candelabra she held.

“Hello you two,” she greeted. “I don’t suppose either of you know what dwarves use to polish silver, do you?”

“Usually soda ash and water in a paste,” said Balin, peering closer at it. “But that looks like it needs much more intensive work.”

“It’ll help keep my hands busy in the nights,” said Bella. “Actual polishing can happen later. More important things first, but I need to do _something_.”

Dwalin stared at her a moment before nodding and saying, “I’ll find soda ash.” He brushed by Bella as he walked past, a hand just clasping her shoulder for a second, and she got the feeling he knew what she was needing without having to say it.

Good, dear Dwalin.

“Are you alright, Bella?” asked Balin. “You look…unwell.”

“Well, this is hardly a holiday, isn’t it? If it weren’t for Dain and Thranduil, we’d all be starving, Smaug did burn down all the granaries of Laketown.”

“That is true.” He didn’t look convinced, and Bella worried that perhaps the evidence of her fit was obvious. “Why don’t you talk a walk?”

“Yes, I have been meaning to see if the water systems project has any preliminary findings.” It looked like that wasn’t exactly what Balin meant, but he didn’t argue the point.

Since Bofur and Nori were somehow in charge despite Bella having to sign all the contracts, she went to find them first, and found Bofur with his brothers, laughing and talking in rapid Khuzdul. She had no idea what they were saying, but their joy and laughter made her smile earnestly, letting herself be pulled in by Bombur.

A good few minutes of joking about the clothes Nori had found for her later, they finally let off and Bella asked Bofur, “Do you know where the Master of the Water Project is?”

“They won’t have found much yet,” said Bofur in that swift manner he did. “Not until tomorrow at the very least. They’ve got to follow the routes back up to find the break, and that’s more than an hour’s work.”

“Oh.”

“But if you’re looking for a distraction, we can help with that.”

“I have so much to do…”

“Lass, you don’t look well,” said Bombur. Bifur made some agreement, punctuated by hand signals that made Bofur look Bella in the eye and point at his brother’s gestures as though to show his agreement, despite that she didn’t understand what exactly he meant.

Eventually the Brothers Ur got her to agree to sit with them. She quite enjoyed the brothers, their easy laughter and jokes. Bifur, was, apparently, the funniest of them all, sending Bofur and Bombur into fits of laughter so strong that it made tears well up in Bombur’s merry eyes. Dain had mentioned that Bella might be allowed to learn Khuzdul after she was officially Queen Consort, and listening to Bofur hoot in laughter from his brother’s jokes, Bella suddenly felt a great desire to learn.

They wrung laughter from her, too, in the end, and she was in a rather good mood by the time she left them to return to the royal tent. Dwalin had managed to find soda ash among the many supplies Dain had brought (a king’s armor needed polishing too, after all the bloodshed was done), and had even mixed it into a paste for her. A polishing cloth lay next to the polishing paste, and the blackened candelabra sat next to _that_ in turn.

Work to keep her hands busy, and thank goodness. She’d have to thank Dwalin somehow.

There was one healer, a dwarf Bella certainly knew the name of once but couldn’t remember, and he was just sitting, keeping an eye on his charges though he was not needed, nodding to her in greeting. Fíli and Kíli were awake, and greeted Bella with very genuine smiles, looking like they were far more content now that they had physical assurance the other was well.

“You two look cozy,” she commented. “You’re not going back to your bed any time soon, are you Kíli?”

“Do you know how hard it was to get over here?” he asked with a smile, but his brother’s arm tightened around his shoulders as if she was going to try and pry them apart. She just shook her head and glanced towards Thorin.

“Has your uncle woken at all?” she asked.

“A little. He, Balin, and Dain were talking about burial rights for Men. Something about a Man who might need to be buried here and if we’d allow it. But aside from that, he had to be woken for lunch.”

“Óin and Litr say it’s nothing to be worried about,” offered Fíli. “We’ve all been sleeping most of the time.”

That was probably true, but Bella had lots of practice worrying, and now, with the weight of regency on her shoulders, it was the one thing she felt good enough at doing to do all the time.

Dinner was brought to them not long after, brought to them by Glóin, who teased the princes about being close as babes again and got teased in return by the two of them about the dust in his beard. Not their best, Bella thought, but they had to make do with what they had.

Bella roused Thorin for dinner, helping him sit up a bit. His wounds pulled and pinched even with aid, if the grimace on his face said anything, but she didn’t see any bleeding through the bandages, which was a good sign. They’d know for certain the next time they changed the bandages.

“You know,” said Bella once sitting next to him on that little stool that had become _hers,_ somehow, “I remember the first meal I ever made you was soup just like this.”

“You’re a bit happier about giving it to me at all this time,” said Thorin, his voice hoarse and soft just like his nephew’s voices. As their healed their voices would grow stronger as well, Bella knew, but it was almost frightening that they should even _sound_ so diminished.

“Well seeing as this time I haven’t been eaten out of my own home by dwarves I had never met before, that’s rather expected, isn’t it?” Had Glóin not been here and talking to Fíli and Kíli, she might have told him she had been far happier to feed the very handsome dwarf who had arrived late than any of the others. But she didn’t much fancy getting teased. Instead she said, “You spoke to Balin and Dain earlier?”

“About that injured Man, yes,” agreed Thorin. “Dain kept mentioning how I would need to decide because of you and…”

“It’s too soon after too much death,” agreed Bella. “You’ll be happy to hear that Man was awake when I checked in on him. The garlic poultice I made him helped.”

“Are you a healer now?” he asked, giving her a smile. “Between thyme and barley and garlic…”

“I know home hobbit cures. And I think they only let me try the garlic because I’m your regent. Anyone else they would have kicked me clear across the encampment.”

He was looking at her with a bright, adoring expression, and she couldn’t help but smile back, taking the empty bowl and setting it aside with hers and taking his hand in hers, just holding. Just holding and seeing that he was still breathing, still healing, still alive.

“Well, not to interrupt,” said Glóin, making both turn to him even if they didn’t drop their hands. He was smiling almost smugly at them, the way most of the Company did when they caught Thorin and Bella being close. “But I’ll take those bowls now.”

Passing him the two empty bowls was somewhat awkward, as Thorin did not let go of her hand, but she couldn’t really protest that, seeing as she didn’t want to let go of him either.

Fíli and Kíli, from their shared bed, looked just as smug as Glóin had, and Thorin seemed inclined to indulge them, not saying a word the way he might have if he were in another sort of mood. Bella, for her part, just shook her head at them before returning her attention to Thorin.

“You look tired, _amrâlimê_ ,” Thorin said, eyes searching her face.

“I thought getting thirteen dwarves to listen to me was hard,” she said. “Now I’m in charge of at least a hundred times that, not to mention Men and Elves.” Thorin managed a frown at the mention of elves, but mostly he looked concerned for her. “I’m alright, Thorin. Yes, I’m tired, there’s a lot that needs doing, but I’m fine.”

He still didn’t look convinced, but let her talk about how the sealing of the gate was going, and how just that morning a new project to bring water down again had begun. He listened as she talked about meeting with the elves with only mild distaste, and faded to sleep somewhere when she was recounting the children and the gold floor. That didn’t surprise her at all.

There was a bit of commotion outside the tent, and Bella turned at that. The guards at the entrance she had never really _agreed_ with, but everyone told her it was just the sensible thing to do and Dain had assigned them and they all seemed happy enough guarding so she hadn’t told them to go. But now, she wondered if there wasn’t some amount of sense, seeing as they were apparently stopping someone from entering.

One of them, a brown haired dwarf with an impressive braided moustache much in the style Fíli kept his, entered and spoke, his voice soft in favor of the sleeping king. The princes, who were yet awake, both sat up a little at his entrance, though the healer’s deliberate cough got them to settle back down. “My lady,” he said. “The Master of the Water Project says he needs to speak with you.”

Bofur had said they wouldn’t have findings until tomorrow, most likely. And now there was enough to cause a _commotion?_ She let go of Thorin’s hand gently and moved to follow the guard outside, finding Álfr there, who looked rather intense.

“My lady,” he greeted. “There’s something of a problem.”

“Problem?” she echoed, feeling the lingering warmth of being with Thorin and laughter from the Brothers Ur fading away. “What sort of problem?”

He ended up leading her away from the encampment, away from the forges. The further they got, the colder the mountain began to feel and the more grudgingly grateful she was to Smaug for lighting the forges that kept them warm. They walked up winding paths and Bella found herself looking down at what she could only think to call a lake.

“What is this?” she asked.

“A cistern,” answered Álfr. “One of many. The cisterns collect rainwater and that water could be sent to any number of places – to the kitchens, forges, baths, that sort of thing.”

“Well, it doesn’t look broken.”

“That’s the problem. These cisterns have been collecting rainwater and snowmelt the whole time Smaug has been here, they’re full to overflowing. The aqueduct to the forges isn’t _badly_ damaged but if we aren’t careful all of this could flood where we’re camped.”

A flood. A flood on top of everything else.

Bella took a deep breath, willing the tight twist in her chest to loosen, for her heart to calm, and said, “What can we do to fix this? Are you suggesting we evacuate again? Because we don’t have heat anywhere else.”

“We need to build another aqueduct to divert this water outside the mountain in case it floods while we repair the forge’s aqueduct.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Not long, it’s not a permanent structure, just something to siphon the water away. But I won’t lie to you and say that there’s no danger of flooding.”

“We’ve too many injured for sudden evacuation.”

“If we do our jobs right, and if it doesn’t _rain_ , then you won’t have to worry about it.”

Bella looked across the massive cistern and took deep breaths. This was one of many cisterns, all of which were doubtlessly as full as this one. “Álfr?” she said. “What about the other cisterns?”

“All as full. We won’t go thirsty, but parts of Erebor are in danger.”

“I’ll need to get those emptied out too.”

“It’ll keep our hands busy, at least. If you force a dwarf to idleness too long, we get irritable.”

Were he anyone in the Company, she might have made some sort of snappy comment at that, but she couldn’t with him. “In the morning. I’ll get teams set up.”

“And in the morning we’ll start building the drainage aqueduct, get the water a bit more manageable.”

He led her back down, feeling the forges (still hot enough to melt gold, more than warm enough to keep the encampment from freezing) as they grew closer and closer. The anxiety of a possible flood wasn’t waning even with Álfr’s assurances of diverting excess water, and Bella was desperately glad that Dwalin had found her materials to polish that black silver.

In contrast to her anxious heart the royal tent was quiet, as was the rest of the encampment as they all set to sleep. No dangers could get to them, not this far in the depths of the mountain, and so when the time came to sleep, no watches needed to be taken for nothing could harm them. _Nothing but floods_ , Bella thought, and wrenched her mind away from that horror to check on her dwarves. Óin was there, and smiled to see her, half his attention on his charges and half on the whittling in his hands. All three of the invalids were sleeping, Fíli and Kíli were tangled together and holding on even in sleep, Thorin’s mighty chest rose and fell evenly.

It was a balm to her worries. Bella sat on her little stool, took up her polishing paste and candelabra and started working, busying her hands. Silver could tarnish within a month and Bella had kept a rather regular schedule of polishing her own silver at home, so the amount of tarnish after so many years was rather intimidating.

It was good, hard work getting a patch of silver to glint through the black, but when she got the base of the candelabra to wink in the candlelight, it filled her with pride. Maybe she could set this up to light the royal tent once it was all clean.

“What are you doing?” asked a beloved voice, and Bella looked up to see Thorin awake and looking at her in confusion.

“Polishing Erebor’s silver,” said Bella. “Ugly tarnished it was. You’re lucky I’ve nothing else to do.”

“Nothing else? Really?” There was a softness to his smile. It was just as youthful and lovely as ever, but now it was tender in a new way. Usually he looked at her with a smile that made him into that young prince he had been last he had lived in Erebor, sometimes he looked at her with a soppy, adoring look, this one was new.

Probably had something to do with her polishing the silver.

She just smiled back at him a long while, caught in the moment of quiet between them before there came the sound of something clattering to the ground. Both turned and saw Óin had dozed off, dropping his whittling. “Poor Óin, he works himself so hard,” said Bella softly. “I’d better let him sleep.”

“And when will you rest, _amrâlimê?_ ” asked Thorin.

“When I’m tired and ready for bed, myself. I’ll wake him then, does that satisfy you?” Thorin nodded, before his eyes caught on his nephews, and his face turned hopelessly tender for just a second.

“You know, they shared one bed, as boys.” Bella could have looked over at the two princes, but instead kept her eyes on Thorin’s face. It was rare she saw him so open and she savored it. “Not because we couldn’t afford another one, but because they didn’t want to be separate. They used to stay up ages after their mother sent them to bed, whispering stories to each other.”

She could imagine that, two little dwarflings tucked under blankets as if that would block all whispers and laughter. Glancing over at the princes now, she smiled at the image, having seen them sit up whispering together on watch. Not much had changed, apparently. As she watched, Fíli moved in his sleep, and after so much watchfulness she almost got to her feet to wake him from the nightmare before it got too bad, but that he moved only to gather his brother closer to him, Kíli going without complaint, even moving on his own. “He looks like a fauntling with his stuffed bear,” murmured Bella.

“Aye, and no wonder. Fíli had a stuffed ram when he was very small, couldn’t sleep without the thing. As a babe, he’d wail like he had lost an arm when he couldn’t find it.”

“I can’t imagine him like that.”

“For a time, no one could imagine him without it. And then Kíli was born. Fíli turned around and gave that ram away without thinking, because he had his brother to hold. Their father used to say Fíli was just making do until his brother was born, he knew one was coming even when the rest of us didn’t.”

Listening to him speak and looking at them, Bella suddenly thought she could see it. A little dwarfling boy with messy blond hair holding onto a little black-haired bundle like it was a stuffed toy, and an even smaller boy letting himself be held, only scooting closer to his brother. Two brothers who didn’t know how to be apart because they never had been, not really.

She had never seen them as little children, and if she had she wasn’t sure she’d be alive to see them as they were now, but still her heart swelled for them. “I haven’t seen them so close in years,” Thorin murmured. Now his face was growing troubled.

“They’ve been kept separate,” said Bella. “And they nearly lost each other, too. I nearly lost you and I didn’t let go of your hand for days, it seemed. I’m not surprised they should want to be assured of each other’s safety.” Thorin looked at her and reached to hold her hand.

“Did I frighten you so?”

“If you go apologizing to me for being wounded, I will get up and leave this mountain.” That drew a disbelieving look from him, but at least it wasn’t the guilty one, so that was an improvement. “Well, at least the tent.”

“Then I shall hold my tongue.”

“As well you should.” She lifted his hand and kissed each of his knuckes in turn, and then the tip of each finger. “When you were first brought to the healers, they almost didn’t let me see you but for that you kept shouting my name. I heard you, I was outside the tent, and I thought to myself ‘as long as he’s calling for me, he’s alive.’ I sincerely hesitated to see you when Óin let me in, because you’d stop calling for me. And if you stopped, I thought I wouldn’t have the assurance you lived.”

“Bella…”

“I tried to think what on earth I would do if you died. Would I go back to the Shire? Just settle back into my books and doilies? I ran off chasing down thirteen dwarves, thirteen _male_ dwarves at that, Lobelia would never get her fill gossiping about _that_. But…but if I lost you, how could I bear to be here without you? How could I walk these halls without thinking of how you yearned to be here?”

“You always said you meant to go home.”

“Yes, well, things change. Nearly losing you is one of them.” Thorin stared up at her at that, and Bella felt her heart grow a bit heavier. That was the tragedy of the man she loved, wasn’t it? He didn’t see _himself_ as worth all that. The Line of Durin, yes, the Throne of Erebor, of course, but Thorin himself? Not nearly deserving as all that. It had been one of the things that had let her notice the Dragon Sickness crawling into his heart, the way he started to self-aggrandize.

_…lovely titles…_

The susurration of Smaug’s voice had been horrible, and it lingered in Bella’s memories, hissing through her nightmares. She had flattered the creature best she could, trying to keep him from killing her and barely daring to plan anywhere beyond moment to moment. Smaug had held off on killing her for that flattery even as he taunted her for daring try it at all.

Thorin had always gone stony faced in the face of praise, even when Bella once commented on how handsome he was. When Thorin had put his grandfather’s crown on, she had known he was getting lost.

“I mean it,” she said, instead of letting herself dwell on those dark places. “Someday I’ll get you to realize that.”

He didn’t look like he believed her, but that was honestly normal enough for him, sad as it was. Someday, she told herself. Someday.

A yawn took her by surprise then, making her jaw crack for it even as her hand covered her mouth. She supposed it was rather late, and she would have to beg poor Ori into writing up _more_ contracts tomorrow for plans siphoning away water from the overflowing cisterns and get Tauriel’s official petition and let her and Kíli see each other and really she should talk to Bard again, just make sure that their agreement to forget their disagreement was true, not to mention telling him and Dain about the cisterns at all.

“Sleep, _ghivashel,_ ” murmured Thorin. “I fear I have asked too much of you.”

“All _you_ need to worry about, Thorin Oakenshield, is healing,” said Bella, pushing herself to her feet to wake Óin. “You have me to worry about the rest.”

“You’re a hobbit, you fuss too much as is,” he said, and Bella threw a gentle glare over her shoulder, frowning at him. He had said such things before and she had always responded the same, and privately, she cheered because this must be a good sign.

“Óin,” she said softly, aware of the sleeping princes. “Óin, wake up. Wake up, Óin.”

He startled awake very suddenly, but very quietly all the same. Fíli and Kíli, despite being right next to him, didn’t stir anymore from his jolting wakefulness than they had any of Bella and Thorin’s murmuring talk. “Lass,” he said, looking dazed.

“You fell asleep, Óin. Dropped your whittling and all.”

“My thanks for waking me. Now go to bed, lass.”

Between Óin and Thorin, she really didn’t have much of a choice, trading her trousers and bodice for the shift that had _truly_ seen better days by now and laying to sleep. Soon as she was horizontal, she was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Bella sings is Let No Man Steal Your Thyme


	4. The Waters of Erebor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Minnesota very well may issue an order to shelter at home real soon, so I'll be going ahead and posting the last chapter tomorrow. Things might be scary, but these are orders made through love - if no one cared we wouldn't have these closures and orders at all.

The projects of siphoning out the dangerous excess of water were announced by an honest to goodness _proclamation_ that made Bella’s skin crawl at hearing anything being declared in her name and made her snap something awful at poor Dori. She had apologized, later, rather awkwardly, because snapping at someone and acknowledging that you had snapped were different things. Still, she daren’t complain a whit about all the signatures on all the contracts that not only Ori, but Balin and a veritable army of legitimate scribes in Dain’s men (why on earth did an army need so many scribes anyway?) had drawn up. Bard had demanded to be informed of all that was happening, and Bella didn’t begrudge him that, warning him of the possibilities of flooding as they worked.

The cisterns of Erebor would be drained of their excess, and, one dwarf had poetically put it, the Lonely Mountain would weep for her dead.

That was an awful thought, but it reminded Bella about Erebor’s Honored Dead. Soon as Thorin was able to stay awake long enough for what ceremony they were due, the burial would begin. She rather hoped someone would object to a hobbit being present, or else _she_ could object to a hobbit being present. The more she thought of it the more true it was; she would entirely _lose it_ if even one more person died. She had been haunted by the specter of Thorin and his nephews dying, had the ghost of bloody mud clinging stubbornly to her feet even still, and she checked in on Hama whenever possible. She probably shouldn’t put all her desperate hope into one Man, but it was too late now.

She was sitting in the royal tent with her polishing in her lap now, awaiting Tauriel. She had sent someone out for her and Kíli was sitting up only by aid of plenty of bundled up blankets and furs and awake only by his excitement to finally see Tauriel again.

“You’re lucky your Uncle’s asleep,” Bella told Kíli, folding the polishing cloth to force her polishing paste into the grooves of the candelabra’s design. “Otherwise this would be hearing her petition, saying ‘I agree’ and then shoving her out again.”

“I wish _I_ was asleep,” said Fíli, though the fact that he had forced himself to stay awake through a nodding head belied that. After talking to her about the garden song, Fíli had taken to enjoying whispering to Bella in the depth of night when both happened to be awake, and had told her how he worried this elf would just break his brother’s heart. As far as he knew them, elves were callous creatures that wafted by on breezy indifference, Thranduil’s imprisonment of them and subsequent demand not only for the gems denied to him (a breaking of a contract was apparently such a To Do that Fíli hadn’t done more than grumble that yes, he was owed those White Gems) but for more than his due certainly proved it.

Tauriel, he had told her, he barely knew, and while he was deeply grateful to her for saving his brother’s life, he was not about to trust his little brother’s heart in anyone’s hands until he had inspected them himself.

Tauriel arrived at last, escorted by Dwalin, which was a relief because Kíli had looked like he was about to do something very ill advised with all that pent up energy. When she entered, Tauriel’s eyes only flicked towards Kíli who glowed to outshine the massive forges outside, before focusing on Bella once more as she set aside her polishing.

This was all for show, more of a formality than anything else, but Bella was happy to do it, especially if it meant Tauriel and Kíli could see each other again. “Tauriel,” she greeted.

“My lady,” answered the elf, which was just silly. Bella could put up with being called that by dwarves for being their regent, and from the children of Men because they didn’t know what else to call her, but from an elf older than the very kingdom they were within?

“None of that. Call me Bella, please.”

“Belladonna, then.” That was a compromise, and Bella took it.

“We’d better get this over with before Kíli ends up keeling over,” said Bella, glancing at the dwarf who had apparently inherited the exact soppy look his uncle sported from time to time. It was a devastating look, Bella at least often found herself buckling under it. She only hoped Tauriel was stronger. “Now, you were exiled by your king, and with nowhere else to spend the winter, you came with us into the mountain, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good, and I’m hardly going to kick you out again. So, as regent, I grant you permission to stay, formally this time.”

“Thank you, Belladonna.”

“You’re welcome. Now go see your dwarf.”

A smile bloomed on Tauriel’s face at that, and in two quick strides she was kneeling at Kíli’s bedside, their hands entwined and foreheads pressed together. Fíli caught Dwalin’s eye and made a disgusted face.

“You watch yourself, lad,” said Dwalin. “Moment you find someone, your brother’s going to pay you back a thousand-fold.”

Fíli looked generally disbelieving at that, at least until Bella said, “He’s right. I had cousins promising me they’d do exactly that if ever they got a chance. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to walk through Hobbiton again without being teased for running off after the first handsome dwarf I saw every three feet.”

The idea of an entire _town_ doing such a thing, however, seemed to put fear into the eyes of not only Fíli, but Dwalin (though his was better hid) and of the two healers who hovered nearby. Though it might have been from seeing an elf kissing their prince so softly.

For that matter, when exactly _had_ Tauriel and Kíli gotten to _kissing?_ And in _company?_

“Goodness, you two!” said Bella. “Save something for the wedding!” That got them to part, at least, which was a relief. Thank goodness Thorin was still asleep.

“I’m not going to apologize,” said Kíli.

“You aren’t, are you? Well, you had better refrain from doing that where Thorin can see, at least for now.” Her approval made Kíli just about shine, a hand reaching to catch a lock of Tauriel’s hair in between his fingers. When they had been interrupted, Tauriel had looked mildly ashamed of herself, but with such careful attentions from a soppy dwarf, that expression was melting away. Which wasn’t surprising to Bella, she had been in such a position before, too.

The Line of Durin seemed to be made up entirely by ridiculous romantics. Time would tell if Fíli was just as bad, Bella supposed.

“Tauriel,” called Fíli, making her turn. “I’ve been a little too sick before, but I wanted to thank you for saving my brother’s life. Again.”

“I can only hope he doesn’t mean to make a habit of needing me to do so,” said Tauriel, but there was earnestness under her light words. She and Fíli looked at each other a long while before the dwarf nodded to her. It might not be _approval,_ but it was, at least, acceptance. For now. He probably wouldn’t approve of anyone for his little brother until he had time to get to know them himself, and there had been precious little time for that before.

“You know, if you had an elf, you’d probably be in better shape than you are,” said Kíli, glancing at his brother.

“I’ll take my battle scars over someone _twice my height_ ,” shot back Fíli. “How does it even work, logistically? Never mind, I’ve decided I don’t need to know that.” It succeeded in making Tauriel chuckle a little under her breath and Kíli laugh aloud, a sound Bella had so dearly missed, even if it did cut off when the motion jostled his wounds.

It was a golden moment, and Bella watched the brothers tease each other with Tauriel still not letting go of at least one of Kíli’s hands, and thought to herself, _I will remember this. Whenever things get too bleak, I will remember this._

It did wonders for beating back the memories of discussions between her, Bard, Dain, Álfr, Bofur, and Nori, talking about where they would transport the wounded if the cisterns should flood, and how they would keep warm. Bofur and Nori were good help, making decisions based on where would be large enough and also contained enough that they could keep warm. The chimneys of the old barracks weren’t blocked, fires could be built there. And the barracks also had no danger whatsoever of containing any Honored Dead.

At last, Thorin woke, and Tauriel took her leave, formally thanking Bella for letting her winter in the warmth of Erebor. As far as the king knew, that was all that had happened. Bella didn’t _like_ deceiving him, but right now probably wasn’t the best time to spring everything on him.

“You’re letting her stay?” he asked Bella.

“Well I’m hardly going to tell her to spend winter without any shelter. She’s been exiled from her people for helping us.” Mostly it was for loving Kíli and refusing to give him up, but Thorin didn’t need to know _that_ either.

“I suppose I can’t argue that.”

“No, you certainly can’t.” The healers were already moving to him, a practiced dance of asking after specific pains and some minor prodding, before declaring the bandages could remain a while longer. There was less and less to worry about, they seemed to be entering a state of being that didn’t seem in danger of changing any time soon. Simply a matter of waiting for the healing to happen and not disturbing it.

It was a practiced dance, but it was also one that exhausted Thorin, not physically but in other ways. There was nothing for it, though, he’d just have to put up with it, because Bella would not allow him to worsen at all.

Thorin also looked to his nephews, and when he saw them in such good spirits (even if Fíli looked like he was going to fall asleep sometime soon), he smiled and asked after them in that half-speech-half-called way they had to talk.

Listening to Thorin and his nephews talk was a quiet joy of Bella’s, picking up her polishing again and just listening. He clearly adored the boys, never so much as snapped at them unless there was some great peril bearing down on them, and just listening was grand. They seemed to ease the exhaustion that plagued their uncle after being so fussed over. Fíli had told her once about how his and Kíli’s father had died when Kíli was too small to make memories, how their uncle had taken the weight from his sister’s shoulders and helped raise them. No wonder then, that they should ease him so totally.

Hopefully his love for his nephews would be enough to overcome his disregard for elves, and he would welcome anyone who brought Kíli such joy.

Fíli faded in the middle of a sentence, and Bella looked up from her polishing and thinking to see the elder prince with his head lolling against his chest. So, he had finally lost the fight to stay awake. She was surprised he had managed this long, really.

Bella helped move him into a more comfortable position, and Kíli himself was adjusting himself to a position better suited to sleep than meeting his beloved again, and that left Thorin and Bella. And a handful of healers, but that was not new.

“Tell me of what is happening,” said Thorin, looking to her. “Outside. How do our people fare?”

 _Our people._ Not that long ago that would have felt untrue, Bella would have protested that she was a _hobbit,_ not a dwarrowdam, but now it felt right. “We have a massive project on our hands. Dwarves are not missing work,” she said. “It’s been suggested that we may even ask the Men to help out on smaller tasks, this is so large.” Thorin just blinked up at her. “The cisterns, Thorin. They’ve been collecting rainwater and snowmelt ever since Erebor was lost. Now that it’s regained, we need to get rid of the extra, or else it will flood.”

“I forgot about those,” whispered Thorin, sounding stunned. No wonder, Erebor had lived in his mind ever since he lost it, he turned over every inch of it in his mind. It had been remarkable, how he knew every curve and corner of Erebor when they fought Smaug. And now he was faced with something he had forgotten about. It must feel like a blow to the chest, thought Bella, before internally wincing, because Thorin was laid low exactly _because_ of a blow to the chest, so maybe that wasn’t her most delicate phrasing.

“I don’t think anyone thought of them. But we’re to have divergent flows installed, drain them of dangerous excess. We have water yet, but to survive the whole of winter we will need to get manageable amounts brought down here.” Thorin nodded, and they spent a while speaking about it, Bella delicately discussing the threat of flooding, how she, Bard, Dain, and those heading the Water Project (as it had come to be called) had discussed evacuation if need be. “So far, no sign of needing to evacuate at all.”

“Things have been going too well for a while.”

“Thorin, how on earth is the fact that you and your nephews are so wounded ‘going too well?’” But she thought she understood. Thorin had lived and guided his people in a time when they had no food, no shelter, little more than what they wore on their person to barter at any time, refugees wandering westward. Thorin had worked in the forges of men, worked himself to sickness more than once trying to get enough food not only for his family but for every dwarf that followed him. If things were in that steady healing state where things had to be left alone, it was “going too well” and shouldn’t be trusted.

What a tragic way of thinking, and yet it was Thorin’s. Someday she’d break him of it. Someday.

“In any case,” said Bella. “Once the cisterns are manageable, then we can start the other repairs that need doing. We’re going to run out of paper for contracts at this rate, you know. We need to fix the air tunnels so we can stay elsewhere, the sorting of the horde really needs to begin, and I need to talk to the elves again and convince them that we do not owe Thranduil anything for the food he donated. He gave that to the Men, and if they happen to share with us, then that is nothing he can demand payment for. Besides, the dwarves have really only been eating what Dain brought.”

“Of course he would try to profit off our starvation,” said Thorin, some of that almost reassuring bitterness entering his voice again. “Don’t let him.”

“I don’t plan on letting him, you can rest easy about _that._ ” She could like his emissaries even if she disliked _him_ , she had long since decided.

Sometimes, when they talked like this, it felt natural that he had declared her regent, the idea of sharing the fuss of managing things felt almost doable. The idea of being him being her husband didn’t feel far fetched at all. Maybe it had been for the best that he had named her regent, now she knew this would be at least halved when he was well. It made the prospect of shouldering this with him doable, even if the prospective title of Queen Under the Mountain was a terrifying one. She was a Baggins of Bag End, not someone who could hold a royal title! So, she mitigated it; at her boldest she was Queen Consort, because that only meant marrying Thorin. Consort, while she was building up to it. Mostly, she just thought of her future status as simply “Thorin’s Wife.” That was a title she could manage.

“There must be more than water and heat,” said Thorin.

“Of course. But that will come _later._ We cannot restore Erebor at the snap of our fingers, it’s a long project. For now we will take water and heat. All things can grow from there.” The Desolation, she remembered. Lying fallow ever since Dale was abandoned for Laketown on the far end of the Long Lake. There must be something to salvage there, she wanted to get her fingers into the earth there and see what was what.

When she told this to Thorin, he just looked at her with something approaching awe as he said, “Only you would think that something in the Desolation could be saved.”

“Excuse you, that land has been lying fallow for ages. This mountain was growing thyme and heather and gorse already, that land has deep potential. Now, I may be a gentlehobbit, or _was_ might be a better word, and I may not have farmed my land, but I grew _five year straight_ best tomatoes in Hobbiton, thank you, I think I can at least assess if the ground is fertile or not. That’s simple basics.”

It didn’t make the look on his face go away, and Bella just sighed and settled. The dwarves and the Men, they both so easily gave up on the Desolation as being unsalvageable. And granted, she was fairly sure she understood _why_ but really.

“And…and Thorin, once you’re well enough, the Honored Dead need some sort of burial,” she finally said.

“I expected so,” agreed Thorin, voice somber. “That is a task for a king, not a regent.”

Bella knew this was probably the best time to say she couldn’t stomach being there, that she _needed_ him to keep her from being there, or Dain, or _anyone_ to object so she could gracefully bow out. But there was already heaviness around Thorin enough that he couldn’t lead, she couldn’t drop this on him. So instead she just nodded, and turned the conversation to anything lighter.

But Thorin was still healing, and healing took all his strength, and he began to fade. But he forced himself to stay awake all the same, pressing Bella to give him details about the Water Project, about the sealing of the gate, even the state of the guild halls if she really had found that candelabra there. Bella remembered this, he had been like this outside the mountain, when forcing himself to speak to Bard, Thranduil, and Dain, before he summoned them and named Bella his regent.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

Insisting he sleep got her nowhere, he simply refused, and out of the corner of her eye, Bella saw one of the healers hold up the poppy milk in offering. But that muddled and confused Thorin, and he seemed to hate being so confused, even if it had helped when his pain had been so severe. If they were alone, if this was night time and there was no one else to see, she might soothe him back to sleep with kisses and soft words, but she had told off Kíli and Tauriel for kissing in public and wasn’t about to be a hypocrite.

It was a matter of a waiting game, then. She indulged him, answering questions about food supply and water, how much they had and how long before the water systems of Erebor could be safely used again. And if he was flagging, he forced himself through it, provoking fond scoffing from Bella. At last, though, he seemed to lose the fight, and his head and eyes dropped at last.

“Stubborn dwarf,” she said, ridiculously fond of him.

Now that they all slept, she might finally go fetch Bard and Dain and go with them up to see the construction of the drainage aqueduct and the sealing of the gate. It was nearly finished now, and there had been some talk of a sort of celebration of the mountain being closed.

Dain had a surprising knowledge of hydraulics, and kept Bard and Bella entertained with his discussions of water gardens like the one he had back in the Iron Hills. It was all pipe sizes that made fountains go, and if you set it up right, one could get a remarkable spout. He was far more excited to see these aqueducts than either Bella or Bard, who just wanted to know they were safe. Bard, who had lived his whole life on the water of Laketown, knew water, but not hydraulics like that. Bella, who had never worked with her own plumbing, found it fascinating.

All in all, the three kept up a fine discussion as they walked. Once things were settled and rebuilt, there might be a water garden in Dale and Erebor, Bella thought.

When they met Álfr, he greeted the three leaders pleasantly and with a short bow, before he began to show them the project.

The massive cistern was to be poured out through an extant drainage hole in the mountainside, originally cut when Erebor was a living city. “So this has happened before?” asked Bard.

“We do a lot of smithy work,” reminded Dain jovially. “Wouldn’t do for the mountain to get plugged up with smoke. These are built to let smoke out.”

“Wouldn’t rain get in?” asked Bella.

“There’s a covering on the outside, diverts water away. Most birds won’t come in this way because of the smoke, too,” said Álfr. “We’re just using it to direct away water.”

“You wouldn’t need to cut another hole,” thought Bard aloud. “Smart.”

“We have our moments, us dwarves.”

The drainage aqueduct was built mostly of salvage from around the mountain, as this was not meant to be permanent, and for all that Bella admired and respected dwarven craft, it didn’t look _stable._ Dain, however, looked it over, and declared it well made for its purpose. 

“How are you going to get the water into this divergent path?” asked Bella.

“It requires a buildup,” said Álfr. “That’s the dangerous part.”

“Buildup?”

He showed them, or pointed from a distance, of how a lip was built to build up water to spill over the channel and into the new path. If that buildup leaked, that was where the danger lay. It had to be absolutely watertight, and they had to do their best to _get_ it watertight. Dwarves were honest by nature, though, and so Álfr didn’t hesitate to tell them that while they had done their best he wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t keep. When the cistern was opened they would keep an eye on it until the dangerous drainage was done, before letting any of it flow down into the repaired channels.

“Are they really already repaired?” asked Bard. “You started…not even a week ago!”

“The damage wasn’t that bad. Smaug didn’t break it, it was just cumulative of time,” said Álfr. “The cistern was the dangerous part, too much water for the systems to handle. Until we get these drained Erebor is in danger. As for the water systems themselves, there’s very little that needed doing, really.”

“To dwarven hands, perhaps,” said Bella. “It would have taken any other race far longer.” Álfr and Dain both looked very pleased at that. “When will you be draining? So we know to be prepared, just in case.”

“I wanted you to decide that, my lady. We stand ready at your orders.”

Bella felt her throat suddenly constrict, and she knew she couldn’t glance at Dain or Bard for them to give an answer. “Two days,” she finally said. “In two days. We need to let people know of the risk and what measures for evacuation we have.”

“I want at least a few guardsmen from Laketown to know where to lead everyone,” agreed Bard. “None of us have ever been inside Erebor before.”

“Nor have plenty of my men,” agreed Dain. “Two days is enough to let people know where to go.”

“Two days then,” agreed Álfr. “I’ll let my men know.”

“And now that that’s settled, shall we to the gate?” Bella took the escape gratefully, and his offered arm. Bard walked with them, looking yet mildly wondrous at Erebor as they walked along. Bella had forgotten to ask about the stories he had heard.

“Does the mountain match with what you grew hearing of it?” she asked, looking to Bard, who glanced at her with the corner of his lips twitching into a smile.

“Not tale for tale, but close enough.”

“The children did complain that it was supposed to be a _silver_ floor.”

“I do find a gold floor hard to believe.”

“When you try to drown a dragon in gold and it doesn’t kill the blasted thing, you don’t really consider draining the gold away, so it cools there. Perhaps it will be stripped someday.”

“Erebor is a mirror of Moria now, just as you said,” Dain interjected. “I doubt that floor will ever be stripped.”

Thorin might _need_ it stripped, Bella thought to herself. He had withstood the small collection of gold outside the mountain, but a few pieces were nothing to the horde that needed to begin being sorted. If Thorin needed the gold gone, she would demand it be stripped, Moria be damned.

“Were you told Erebor had a silver floor yourself?” she asked instead.

“Not that I ever believed it, but yes,” said Bard. “And jewels the size of eggs on every chalice, with gold plates and gold cutlery.”

“Terribly ineffective for cutting, gold,” commented Dain. “But there might be a few gold spoons about.”

“Tilda always liked the story of the Obsidian Mirror,” Bard said. “She’d beg her mother to tell her that story almost every night.”

“What tale is that?” asked Bella.

As they walked to the gate, Bard told them the children’s story that had emerged in Laketown over the years. It was about a dwarf lad called Ragnar who wanted to court another named Hakon. Hakon’s parents put to their son’s suitor a challenge; they would approve and allow the marriage if Ragnar could make the dark of night shine like the day. Hakon said they should run away together, that another kingdom might welcome them, but Ragnar declared Erebor was their home and he would force Hakon’s parents to approve their marriage.

So Ragnar worked, climbing to the deepest mines and seeking the blackest mineral, bringing up at last a hefty specimen of obsidian. And Ragnar set to work, cutting and polishing, setting it in a silver frame. He polished and polished that rock for a year and a day, and finally he took Hakon’s parents before the king and asked that the fulfillment of the oath be witnessed by the highest authority in the mountain. And there, Ragnar produced the obsidian mirror, holding it so the light of the torches reflected in it.

Hakon’s parents were trapped in their word and were required to allow the marriage. Ragnar and Hakon married and lived happily the rest of their days.

It was a story that Bella could imagine was told looking back at the mountain, remembering the old days. Even Dain looked a little charmed at the story that Men told to their children about the Dwarven Kingdom.

By that time, they had reached the gate, and as had happened every time Bella had been there, their arrival seemed to spur even more action, as if she was coming to rebuke them for not working hard enough or something. Mostly she wanted the project done for their own sake, she could see her breath up here by the gate.

Winter’s bleeding into autumn was becoming more apparent, as true winter gained ground around them. It reminded Bella of that awful Fell Winter, but the Men, Dwarves, and even the elves all said this was perfectly normal in this region. It made her feel almost ashamed of the gentle winters of fluffy snow and winter pansies.

The gate wasn’t quite finished yet, and a streak of sunlight was pouring through, looking buttery and inviting but only a touch warmer than anywhere else, enough for Bella to think she had imagined it, but also enough for her to almost involuntarily tilt her head back and let the sun shine on her. There was some difference in quality between the sun’s light and heat, and that produced from the forges below.

After long enough for the light to tint her vision blue, she realized that she had been intolerably rude and brushed her hands off on the skirts of her dress (the brothers -Ri had managed to salvage as many clothes for her as anyone else had, and had even cleaned the dress that had barley stains on it, more’s the miracle) and hurried over to Nurum, asking after the project.

“We’ll be done by the end of the day,” he told her proudly, looking up to the gate. “It’ll keep us safe all winter.”

“Then we will be up to see it done,” said Bella warmly.

“Have you really cut and built a full gate?” asked Bard.

“A temporary one. Come next year there might be a more permanent one might be built, appropriate for the restored Erebor,” said Nurum.

Dwarven crafting seemed to baffle Men, in both speed and quality. They honestly baffled Bella too, but she hadn’t grown hearing stories about it like they were impossible fairy stories and so they seemed somehow more plausible, if only because she had seen it before she really heard of it.

They made their way back down below, and Bella was found by dear Bombur, who just about forced food into her hands. “Eat, Bella,” he said in worried sternness. “Hobbits eat seven meals a day, I don’t think I’ve seen you eat more than two a day.”

“Honestly, I’m not starving,” Bella scoffed, but in her stomach there was a cold weight like she had swallowed a diamond, because she couldn’t exactly prove him _wrong._ Not as easily as either of them would like.

She ate sitting next to him under his watchful eye, and only when she was finished with seconds did he let her go. The warm food in her belly finally let her feel full, even as she felt a little guilty for eating the seconds he had foisted on her, and with a full belly she felt more energetic than she had for a while now.

And that energy gave her the energy to meet with the healers and tell them of the cistern and the drainage and that it was to happen in two days. The whole lot of them, even ones yawning for having been woken after plenty long shifts doing the hard work of healing, ended up walking to the old barracks, to familiarize them with the fastest routes. The horse-lifts were already being put into place again by Men, and Bella would have to thank Bard for that.

“It’s freezing up here,” said one of the healers, she didn’t see who.

“But there are fireplaces,” pointed out a dwarf. “If we need them, we’ll light them. They’re contained enough here.”

“Too contained if you ask me,” said a healer of Men. “We’ll be bent double all winter!”

“These weren’t built for Men,” pointed out another dwarf.

“Then we had all hope that the buildup holds and that no evacuation is necessary,” said Bella.

The return below went a bit faster, and by then Dain and Bard had gotten the word spread in non-worrisome words which did wonders, it really did. If people were already panicky about it _now_ then if it ever did come to pass then it would be all the worse.

The guards at the royal tent were all told to simply start sounding the alarm at the first sign of flood waters, and each rather solemnly hung a hunting horn to their belts. If it wasn’t something that made her nervous, she’d probably be laughing at the solemnity.

All three of her boys were asleep when she ducked inside, but Óin was there, and he promised they would all be informed, gently so they didn’t worry.

Bella rather hoped that nothing would happen and everyone would laugh at being so very frightened.

By the time everyone had been informed, a runner came to fetch her, rather breathlessly telling her that the gate was about to be finished, and would the lady like to come see the work done? She agreed, and on the way up met with Dain and Bard again. Sigrid was with Bard, and greeted Bella fondly, asking after Thorin and his nephews.

“Prince Kíli is really in the best shape, and even then it’s not ideal,” said Bella. “But none are in danger, and all we have to do is wait for healing to happen. Though between the princes I don’t know how long they’ll be _willing_ to wait.”

“I remember Kíli was barely healed from that poisoned wound before he was insisting he could walk,” said Sigrid. “I don’t imagine he’ll be any better now.”

“Not particularly, no.”

They arrived at the gate just then, to find Nurum and all the other workers standing rather at attention. They _were_ all soldiers too, Bella remembered. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised.

“My lords, my ladies,” greeted Nurum. “The gate is just about finished. Would your ladyship like to place the final piece?”

“Rather an honor, Master of the Project,” commented Dain, but not unkindly.

“We thought it right to offer.”

“I, uh…I’m not as strong as a dwarf, Master Nurum,” said Bella. “I don’t know if I would be able to.”

“It’s only a matter of pulling this rope, really,” he said, gesturing to it. “It will slide the last piece in place.”

“Oh. Well then, I would be truly honored to.”

And so she was led to the rope, and with everyone watching pulled on it with all her strength. She felt something _give_ at the other end, and she stumbled a bit at that, but there came a great grinding noise of stone on stone, and then a very final sort of _clunk._ And then the dwarves around began to cheer. The project was done, the gates of Erebor sealed until spring.

Nothing for it but for them to get along, then. No getting out for months.

Dain talked about something of a party being thrown to celebrate the first project of restoring Erebor, but Bella quailed at the thought of celebrating with the specter of a flood hovering at the edges of their encampment. Sigrid worried vaguely about food supplies, as did Bard, but Bella knew about food perhaps more than she did about telling if ground was fertile or not, and she knew that they could withstand a few modest celebrations. Not one for each step towards restoration, but a few.

Really, a party might even be good for everyone. Make the staying in the mountain into something _good,_ rather than simply shelter from the winter.

“Perhaps _after_ the draining. Just in case,” she said. “It’s only two days away.”

A double celebration, it was decided. Modest, but festive enough. Try and raise spirits after the battle, that was long enough ago it wasn’t totally disrespectful. Laughter was due again anyway, and Bard agreed. 

Maybe there was something to it, thought Bella. Maybe a party could banish the nightmares of bloody mud and death that still haunted her so often.

Nori and Bofur wanted to talk to her about evacuation plans, both looking sorry for it when they asked her, and then Gloin protested not having seen her in an age and a half and they went for a walk, Gloin telling stories about his family. At this rate, when Dóra and Gimli actually arrived in Erebor, Bella would have to remind herself that she had never actually _met_ them.

It was a lovely way to spend a while though, and only when Gloin let her go did she think to thank him for distracting her from her various duties. She felt lighter, and promised herself to thank him later. In the moment, however, that lightness gave her energy enough to go find and check on Hama, the Man on whom her sanity seemed to lie these days.

She really did feel bad for that, but it was too late to change it now. He was still rather fuzzy, but the garlic _was_ helping, apparently not insignificantly too. Each day that went by without his condition worsening, a little more hope bloomed in her chest. She might actually feel relief and think that he was certain to live one of these days if she wasn’t careful.

Hama reminded her of how her boys had been when they just moved into the mountain, though they did maintain lucidity now, even if they weren’t awake for _long_ unless they forced themselves. Which, of course, they did.

“’M told I’ve got you to thank for the garlic?” Hama said, blinking at her.

“Yes, and you’re welcome to complain about the smell,” she said. “Durward has.”

“I won’t complain about being alive.”

“You’ll complain about it once you’re well,” promised Durward, but more fondly than not. “My lady, what’s this about flooding?”

“The water cisterns of Erebor have been filling up all these years. It’s a miracle this mountain isn’t half lake as it is,” said Bella. “The draining should hold, but it is a lot of water, and we have to be aware of the danger.”

“And there’s plenty who will direct us where we need to go,” added Hama’s sister, Fenena. Her baby was asleep, and yet she still swayed as though still trying to lull it. Maybe she was just trying to keep the child asleep. “And Bard is organizing who’ll carry the ones who can’t walk.”

“I’ll be the one helping carry you, love,” said Durward, hand brushing fondly on his husband’s shoulder. The better Hama got, the more at ease and genuinely happy his family became. And the more Bella wished she had their certainty.

“Hopefully you won’t have to,” was all Bella said.

“I’d like a bath myself,” murmured Hama, already halfway back to sleep. When he fell totally to sleep, Durward moved his injured arm with absolute care and Fenena settled the baby in the crook of his other arm.

“Urien won’t stay asleep lest he’s with uncle some nights,” she said. Bella thought about Fíli holding onto his little brother like a stuffed toy and Kíli holding him back the same and smiled. All peoples did seem to be the same, at their core, she was learning that well enough.

Fenena’s husband had died in the battle, and she poured all herself into baby Urien because of it, too frightened to face grief. Bella understood. Grief was like hungry mud, red from the blood, that grabbed ones feet and tried to suck them down. Keep moving, and the mud couldn’t keep hold.

But Bella hadn’t lost anyone. She had faced the horror of nearly losing Thorin, and in that time when nothing was certain, when she knelt by his side nearly screaming at him to stay awake until help could come, already weeping for Fíli and Kíli because she _could not leave_ and see if they even yet lived, she had felt what Fenena was feeling now. But it had been passing, it wasn’t real, not like what Fenena suffered.

She could empathize, then, but not understand. Not really. Not for true.

In the distance she heard someone cry out, full voiced, “Night has fallen! It is the night!”

A necessary announcement this deep in the mountain where the light never changed. One only could close their eyes against the forges’ light and little more than that. Bella took her leave then, bidding them goodnight and returning to the royal tent.

All was quiet there, and Bella disrobed to her shift, laying to bed. She would prepare people more for the possibility of evacuation the next day, and she’d need her energy for running up and down from barracks to forges.

* * *

It was icy cold heat, burning her as she stood frozen, her breath so fast she wasn’t getting any air at all. Smaug whispered about her, his voice everywhere all at once. The halls of Erebor echoed so terribly, it was a wonder the dwarves above weren’t listening to what he was saying to her in that horrible voice like a slippery eel but half as decent as that honest fish.

_“The coward has weighed the value of your life and found it worth nothing.”_

“No. No, you’re lying!”

_“What did he promise you? A share of the treasure? A Queen’s crown? As if they were his to give! I am King Under the Mountain! And I will not part with a single coin! Not one piece of it!”_

**_I will not part with a single coin!_ **

thorin

**_not one piece of it!_ **

thorin what’s happened to you 

scales under her hands _no_

 _his grandfather went mad_ _no_

 _no_ golden eyes

 _his father fell_ _no_

_to the same sickness_

_no_ _can you swear_

they called it dragon sickness she didn’t think they meant this _thorin oakenshield_

 _nononono_ _will not_

 _thorin!_ _fall_

_too?_

_“I’m afraid our game ends here”_

**_Throw her from the ramparts!_ **

Bella woke with a strangled gasp, heart racing. She gulped for air and sat up as though to escape, throwing aside the blanket that had been smothering her, face in her hands and just breathing.

A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched spectacularly, only to see it was Litr with troubled eyes. “Are you alright?” he murmured.

“Yes, yes, just…just dreams. Memories of Smaug.” His face transformed to one of great sympathy and understanding that she should have such troubled dreams remembering the Greatest Calamity. It was half true, anyway. Seeing scales growing on Thorin’s skin and that sideways eyelid across his suddenly golden eye rather than their beloved blue didn’t need to be mentioned.

Dragon sickness, no wonder her dreams created such fantastical things with a name like that.

“Do you need anything?” offered Litr. “I can mix you something if you’d like.”

“No, no, I’ll…I just need to keep my hands busy. Busy hands keep a busy mind, they say. I’ll be back to sleep soon.” He didn’t look convinced, but didn’t stop her from taking up her polishing again.

Focusing only on scrubbing away the mark of years to find bright silver beneath did help keep the dreams of dragons and gold away, and she was grateful. Litr went back to what he was doing before Bella’s nightmare awoke her, scribbling in a notebook, apparently. The two remained quietly busy for a while, before quiet noises of distress and pain came from Fíli’s bed.

Without even registering what she was doing, Bella went to him, discarding her polishing without a thought. It seemed one moment she was sitting on the edge of her bed, scrubbing diligently, and the next she was suddenly on the edge of Fíli’s bed, gentle touches to his jaw and throat, trying to both calm and awake him, depending which would work best.

No matter what she did, it didn’t seem to reach him, and the nightmare only grew worse and worse. She had learned not to stand over them when waking them, and moved to kneel beside his head as she shook him awake. He rose with a strangled cry and abortive motion as though swinging a blade of some sort. Knowing how armed Fíli kept himself, she couldn’t even begin to guess what he thought he was wielding.

It felt, sometimes, like between the four of them they would never have a peaceful night without nightmares again. At least, Bella tried to comfort herself with, Fíli’s weren’t nearly so terrifying as when he had been feverish, screaming without waking at times.

“It’s alright, Fíli, shh, it’s alright,” she soothed, her nerves not really settled since her own nightmare and really soothing herself as well as the young man before her. Litr was already at work, mixing one of the draughts he made to help sleep. He’d probably foist it onto Bella soon as Fíli drank his share. “It was a dream. The mountain was sealed, I pulled the rope myself, nothing can get in. You’re safe here.”

He stared at her a moment, still in the ends of his dream, and then desperately to his brother and uncle, and closed his eyes, breath stuttering as tears began to flow. Relief that it had only been a dream? Terror at what he had dreamed? Upset that still he could be laid so low by nothing more substantial than dreams? Perhaps it was a mix of all three. Perhaps it was something else entirely.

“Oh, Fíli,” sighed Bella.

Tears were for when you were alone, that was how she had been raised. No need to trouble others and make them uncomfortable, if someone seeks you out that’s different, but you don’t go around displaying it. (Widows and widowers with black ribbons in their hair or black cravats were exempt, of course.) But the Dwarves, they were free with all emotions; they shared their joy, despair, anger, frustration, love…Fíli didn’t need someone wiping away his tears and gently saying, “None of that, none of that. There now, mustn’t blub.”

She had found out that few things eased Fíli like a hobbit garden song. Kíli could be soothed after a nightmare by touch, Thorin by kisses, but Fíli could slip back to sleep halfway through a garden song, or else he stayed awake, terrified to go back to sleep.

She had sung more about lilacs and rosemary in the time since the battle than she had in the last few _years._ It was an exercise in dragging out the old tunes, prying them from the depths of memory. “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night” and its ilk were ones she knew better than some of the songs she soothed Fíli back to sleep with. Lucky the young man didn’t know a word of the songs, otherwise he’d probably notice she missed whole lines and tucked them in again later when she remembered them.

She didn’t move, just glanced at Litr somewhat desperately, and he brought her the little stool she sat on without a word, standing by with a sleeping draught in case the prince needed it. Bella took Fíli’s hand in hers and let him squeeze with all his might (so much less, now. His grip, at its strongest, was tolerable now, and when had that happened?). It seemed to ease him, holding onto something, and Bella was suddenly reminded of how he had held Kíli so close. How Kíli, after a nightmare, was eased by being held, and now Fíli by holding.

Smiling at the thought that even now, so many years between this tent and two dwarfling boys sharing a bed, the most basic principles of comfort hadn’t changed, Bella set about singing, wiping away Fíli’s tears gently as she did.

“Lavender’s blue, dilly-dilly, lavender’s green,” she sang, trying to keep her voice soft. “When I am king, dilly-dilly, you shall be queen. Who told you so, dilly-dilly, who told you so? Twas my own heart, dilly-dilly, that told me so. Call up your men, dilly-dilly, set them to work; some to the plough, dilly-dilly, some to the fork. Some to make hay, dilly-dilly, some to cut corn; while you and I, dilly-dilly, keep ourselves warm.

“Lavender’s green, dilly-dilly, lavender’s blue, if you love me, dilly-dilly, I will love you. Let the birds sing, dilly-dilly, let the lambs play, we shall be safe, dilly-dilly, out of harm’s way. I love to dance, dilly-dilly, I love to sing; when I am queen, dilly-dilly, you’ll be my king. Lavender’s green, dilly-dilly, lavender’s blue; I’ll be your queen, dilly-dilly, when I wed you. Who told me so, dilly-dilly, who told me so? I told myself, dilly-dilly, I told me so.

“When you’re away, dilly-dilly, I’ll dream you’re near, when you’re at home, dilly-dilly, I’ll be your dear. You’ll carve the meat, dilly-dilly, I’ll bake the bread, we’ll share our board, dilly-dilly, we’ll share our bed. Wedding’s for life, dilly-dilly, love is to share, and love must grow, dilly-dilly, with joy and care. If you love me, dilly-dilly, never to roam, if I love you, dilly-dilly, we’ll build a home. Lavender’s green, dilly-dilly, lavender’s blue, if you love me, dilly-dilly, I will love you.”

Fíli was soothed by the end of the song, but not asleep again, just staring upwards with rather somber eyes and still holding her hand tight as he could and very clearly not wanting to talk about what he had dreamed. Litr came then, and had the prince drink the draught for sleep. “I can’t promise no dreams,” he said as Fíli drank. “But I’ve heard few enough complaints of them I think we can be confident.”

When he finished and lay back down, he still reached again for Bella, who let him hold onto her hands tight as he needed, and thought of the songs of midsummer that were sung by the loud-voiced youths who planned to go courting when the sun was just rising and the ground still glistening with dew. They sang only with such courage for being together, the old words giving them direction of what to ask of their sweethearts. Bella herself had been sung such a song once or twice, but nothing that lasted beyond the Lithedays.

“’Twas early I walked on a fine Midsummer’s morning, the fields and the meadows were decked and gay,” sang Bella, squeezing Fíli’s hands as holding and song let him start to slip into a dozing state, hopefully on his way to sleeping. “The small birds were singing, the woodlands are ringing, early in the morning, at the breaking of day. I will play on my pipes, I will sing to thee, my lady! ‘Twas early in the morning at breaking of day.

“Arise, love, arise! Go and gather your love posies, the fairest of flowers that in yonder garden grows. Go gather me lilies, carnations, and roses, I’ll wear them with pride for the young girl I chose. Come dress me with flowers, I’m as gay as a king, I’m as glad as a bird when my carol I sing.

“O hark, love, o hark, love! The nightingales are wooing, the lark is aloft, piping shrill in the air. In every green bower the turtledoves are cooing, the sun is hot gleaming; arise up, my dear! I’ve waited all year from midwinter through today, yes, I’ve waited all year for the dawn of the Lithedays.

“Arise, love, arise! In song and in story, the sun rises high over golden fields of hay. I’ll play thee a tune on my gilded pipes of ivory, early in the morning at breaking of day. I’ll play on my pipes, I will sing to thee, my lady! It’s early in the morning at breaking of day.”

He was asleep, hands limp in hers, and Bella didn’t move a long time. Fíli had been so brave and valiant for so long; pushing through every misfortune that had befallen the Company, through his brother nearly dying of poison, through Smaug and all the dragon brought with him, through his uncle falling prey to Dragon Sickness, through battle, through wounds dealt him by the orcs and the fever those same wounds gave him, through his family just as wounded as he. So much had been building on him, and Bella’s concern was so fiercely on Thorin and his nephews after him, she felt great remorse that she wasn’t doing enough for him.

“Don’t torture yourself,” said Litr. “Go back to bed, my lady. He’ll keep for the night.”

“What makes you think I’m torturing myself?” she asked, even as she tucked the blankets about Fíli once more.

“You’ve got that look on your face, every healer wears it. You want to do more to help him, you think you aren’t doing enough. My lady, you are ruling in Thorin’s stead, making decisions in his name about elves petitioning to stay, how Bard’s people will get their promised money, about draining those cisterns and how we’ll survive if the divergence doesn’t hold. The fact that you can’t save the princes and the king from nightmares…you’re doing _more than enough._ ”

Bella shrugged, uncomfortable. If he continued to praise her, she’d probably end up snapping at him and she didn’t want to do _that._ She liked Litr too much to snap at him, she did that at her dear friends often enough and though they forgave her, she always had the sense they did so only because they were her friends. It was horrible rude, snapping at someone who had done nothing wrong.

He did seem to see that she was uncomfortable and simply sent her back to bed, offering the draught once more. Looking almost longingly at her silver and polishing away the mark of years and hopefully the nightmares away, she agreed.

It tasted like a cousin of the sleep-cures hobbits mixed, and it was familiar enough that she went to sleep almost for that rather than its properties. And she did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs are Lavender's Blue and The Midsummer Carol (lifted 100% from The Devil's Interval [go listen to it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWrSg1EMeFg))  
> 


	5. The Long Night and the Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, heads up, there's discussion of pretty bad catatonia/dissociation in this chapter, but it resolves pretty quickly too, just in case that's something you need to be aware of

The day the draining of the cistern that threatened to drown them all began, the whole encampment seemed to be on edge. Bella spoke to the elves again that day, and did not miss Feranheil looking to where the water would come from, if it came. She looked that way almost more often than she looked at Bella. Which was fair, Bella glanced that way a lot too. Everyone did.

Their discussions were halfway distracted, and eventually, they decided simply to meet again once the danger had passed, that they might focus.

When Bella left she saw Tauriel, staring in the direction of the water, and coincidentally, the dwarves. Still, she greeted Bella kindly enough, and said, “If the water comes, I’m going to help him.”

There was no asking _who_ she meant. “I’ll object to you running _toward_ the water, but not to helping Kíli,” said Bella. “I don’t think anyone would fault you saving his life again.”

“It would be the third time,” she said, a smile growing on her lips.

“He’s getting quite a debt, isn’t he?” She might have felt bad, joking at Kíli’s expense, but that Kíli and his brother had done plenty of joking at _her_ expense early in the quest, and that it made Tauriel smile. Anything that made the woman smile was alright, in Bella’s book at least.

“How is he?” asked Tauriel, open yearning in her voice.

“Improving. Slowly. But because he had you, he’s not as bad as his brother, or Thorin.” Her voice was bitter at Thorin’s name. If she had _been there…_ well, she probably wouldn’t have actually been much help, really. But still…

“Tearing yourself apart does nothing but spill more blood, Belladonna,” said Tauriel softly, and Bella turned to stare at the elf who looked back at her. “Even my presence did nothing but lighten the wounds Kíli was dealt. It did not prevent them, and to see him be so wounded…I thought I felt mortal grief. Just for a moment.” Her eyes were distant at this feeling so few of her kind ever felt, a feeling she had known for only a few moments. A feeling she would know again, in time when Kíli did pass from the world.

“I was beginning to grieve Thorin even as I didn’t give up hope,” said Bella, touching Tauriel’s hand a moment. What a contradictory thing that was, and yet it was true.

Tauriel nodded, eyes turning once more to the direction where Kíli was, and said, “Don’t tear yourself apart. There has been more than enough blood on the field.”

The thought of blood made Bella shudder, too suddenly for her to even try and hide it. Her feet tapped together, the solid sound of boot on boot comforting, in a way. She wore shoes, no blood could get on her feet and squeeze up between her toes, wouldn’t mat down the curls on her feet. She was safe. She was safe.

Tauriel noticed, though, and sympathy was written plain on her face. “You are strong, Belladonna, but you don’t have to be strong every moment of every day,” she said.

“I understand that,” said Bella. And she did. It was the same thing with tears; not something for in public, something to be handled alone. Problem was, with all the demands on her time and all the healers in the tent not to mention the invalids, she didn’t exactly have time to handle it alone.

She had fallen into a crying fit when she found the candelabra, maybe when she finished polishing it and she went to find something else, she would allow herself a few more tears.

It was all well and good to wipe Fíli’s tears and sing him down with garden songs, but dwarves were not hobbits, she knew _that_ by now. It wasn’t the same.

She bid Tauriel goodbye not long after that, and returned to walk through the tents of Men. She found Tilda playing games with some of the children her age, having drawn a skipping game with some sort of chalk. There was a rather determined glint to the edges of their game, and Bella supposed that had to do with the specter of flooding. If they drew their game with chalk, the water would not come and would not wash it away.

She could admire that sort of magical thinking, if nothing else.

She hadn’t seen Bofur or Nori in a long time, it seemed, they were so determined to make certain nothing happened, always up at the aqueduct. When the danger had passed, Bella intended on making sure to thank them both very heartily. Perhaps she could bolster courage enough to make some sort of speech at that celebration that had been talked about. Or perhaps a more private way of saying thanks.

It was hard to focus on anything else but the danger that hovered at the edges of the encampment. To think, they had once worried about dying by fire, and now by water! Bella herself wanted very much to have this over and done with, she had had _more_ than enough of death, _thank you._

By the end of the day, when night was announced, people generally seemed a bit calmer. Nothing had happened _yet,_ so maybe nothing was going to happen at all. Thorin looked distrustful of that when Bella told him over dinner of the prevailing attitude, but he was used to absolutely nothing going right. Bella went to bed almost noticeably earlier than she did most nights, wanting to get to the next day when Bofur, Nori, and Álfr would find her and tell her that the draining was done and there would be water for bathing and laundry aplenty.

She was woken in the night, not by the sound of one of her dwarves having a nightmare as was so horrendously common, but by a panicked blaring of a horn. After the Quest and the Battle, her first thought was that orcs were upon them, their hideous faces full of cruelty and death looming in her mind’s eye, before she moved to stand and her feet _splashed._

She looked down and saw water and everything came rushing back.

On her feet immediately she rushed out of the tent and heard horns blown from all corners of the encampment, could see dwarves launching themselves out of their tents as though Smaug was climbing up into their encampment.

Nori was running towards her at full speed, a look of horror on his face. She caught him by the forearms and said urgently, “Get the furnaces on full roar, we can try and keep the water from reaching it if it dries it up.”

“If there’s enough it won’t make a difference,” he warned.

“We have to _try._ ”

“That we do.” And he was gone, and Bella, for her part, was already running to the healer’s tent.

“We need to start moving the injured now,” she said as soon as she entered. The most important tonics and cures had already been packed and were being loaded up onto everyone’s backs as she spoke.

“You’re quite right,” said a Mannish healer. “How likely is a flood?”

“I can’t tell, but right now we don’t have the luxury of staying to find out.”

“We’ve got the furnaces working up to full roar,” said Nori, running in, a little out of breath. “We need to start moving the injured.”

“Show them the way. Where’s Bofur?”

“He’s up with the aqueduct. Bella, you need to help the evacuation.”

She nodded and rushed out. Children were crying, she could hear, in confused distress. The water was splashing under her feet as she ran back towards the Royal Tent. Óin and Litr were directing their charges to be put into litters carried by members of the Company, especially Fíli and Thorin (much as they protested).

“You can’t hardly sit up!” snapped Bella. “Let them carry you, _both_ of you, or so help me!” She didn’t have a good threat to follow that up with, but she was spared having to by Tauriel arriving.

“Kíli is well enough not to need a litter, we need as many of those free as possible. Help him,” snapped Óin, very barely glancing at the elf as he helped cautiously move Fíli into the litter.

“I can walk,” protested Kíli, forcing himself to his feet. Tauriel offered up herself as support, and they started to slowly make their way out, noticeably faster than Kíli would have been able to do alone. There was a look on Tauriel’s face that said she would pick him up and carry him if the danger grew too much. No one mentioned that being on his feet like this might hinder his healing, too worried about the immediate danger.

As the royal family began to move, Bard was heard shouting directions to his people, pointing them to follow the dwarves who were leading the way. The forges were at full roar, sounding like Smaug himself at his most furious. The ground around them was dry for now, but there was still plenty of water to allow for splashing of each footstep. Much more and even full roar wouldn’t help dry the ground.

Horses and rams were tugged along, panicked at the panic around them in the way animals got. But already the slings they had lowered the horses with were being lowered again to bear them upwards, which was good. She didn’t have to worry about that, at least.

The children were being carried by parents, dwarven soldiers were piling food onto their backs and rushing to save it. If the food soured, they would all die, slower than drowning but enough.

The water felt like it was getting deeper. Was it getting deeper?

“Bella!” called Dain, and she spun to see him there, dressed in his nightshirt. Bella was too, and if the situation wasn’t literally threatening death, she might feel ashamed.

“Dain,” she gasped, short of breath for panic. Her feet she _swore_ the water was higher on her feet.

“I’ll help on the back, you go ahead, make sure everyone is going as they should.”

She should stay, she should make sure the dwarves keeping the forges at full roar didn’t drown even as they tried to dry the water before it could reach them. But a cistern _that full_ wouldn’t be stopped by a few forges, even ones hot enough to melt gold.

But there was the fact that she couldn’t swim to contend with as well.

“ _Go,_ ” urged Dain, and Bella did, splashing along as she went.

The elves were urgently helping as well, their eyes fiercely set on the water below. She wondered if they could see the amount rushing towards them. If they could see death coming.

“Eilonhuil!” she gasped, seeing the elf woman. Eilonhuil turned, and fixed her eyes on Bella. “I hate to ask but I must. If it becomes too dangerous, will you fetch the dwarves below? I will not have them drown trying to keep forges lit. I can’t swim or else I’d do it myself.”

“I will, my lady,” promised the elf, and with that assurance Bella continued upwards, directing people and urging them onward.

As they moved upwards, it got colder and colder, but it was safely dry. They were still climbing, horses still being pulled up blindfolded and secured, rams bleating as they were herded up, that Bofur and Álfr came running up from behind, crying out, “It’s safe! It’s safe! The leak has been stopped! It’s safe below!”

From Bofur and Álfr, Dain shouted it forward, and various strong-voiced soldiers shouted it forward the same. Bella, for her part, collapsed to sit down on the stairs they were climbing, and let out two gusty sobs of relief before scrubbing her face and starting to direct people back down below. The horse that was halfway up started to be lowered again, and this time the crying wasn’t from children but from their parents, not from distress but relief.

Everyone moved a lot slower now that the rush of panic and terror had left them, but Bella wasn’t inclined to complain.

As people and food and livestock were brought back down, Bella found Bofur and Álfr and asked, “What happened?”

“There was a leak in the divergence’s buildup,” said Álfr. “We caught it quickly and fixed it, but there is a lot of water in that cistern, my lady. Even a minute’s delay is enough to cause panic.”

“You did well,” praised Bofur, but his usual bright voice was shaky. “Nori went running for you second we saw a leak at all, but you got everyone moving.”

“The forges on full roar to dry out water before it reaches them was smart. We gave the order to let them cool a bit, unless you object.”

“If we lost them, we’d be relying on fireplaces in the barracks, and I don’t know that we had enough wood for that,” said Bella. “I had to try something.”

“And it _helped,_ ” stressed Bofur. “You did well, Bella.”

“I want to see what happened myself. Once everyone is back below, I want to see it.”

Bard joined them then, and Bofur and Álfr repeated what had happened. He and Dain, who had joined not long after Bard, also wanted to see the aqueduct. But first, they would see their people settled.

The litters bearing Fíli and Thorin reached the royal tent first, with Óin and Litr fussing and ordering in turn. Once they were settled, they set to checking over their wounds, making sure they had not worsened for transport. Neither really enjoyed the prodding they endured. Kíli arrived later, stubbornly on his feet but entirely ashen and a good portion of his weight on Tauriel, who looked distressed at his condition. She would not budge from his side as she settled him back in bed, not that Bella was any better, flitting between the three and glancing towards the exit of the tent, wanting to check on everyone else. The Company at least all came to the royal tent and she was assured that they were well. But Hama, Durward, Fenena, Baby Urien, Bard and his children, Denerath and Rathtyen, Feranheil and Eilonhuil, there were so many she needed to check on.

But when Fíli reached out to Bella, she dropped to his side, letting him hold her hand a long moment, and gain comfort by holding. Kíli had Tauriel giving him more than enough touch now, she could be there for Fíli. A long moment with a tight grip, and then he let her go, turning his face away and clearly wanting to be alone for now. And so, she returned to Thorin.

He hadn’t missed that Tauriel was paying such attention to Kíli, but he didn’t seem to abhor it the way they had all worried he would. In fact, he didn’t seem to react to it much more than noticing it was happening. He seemed very distant in general, and even Bella stroking his beard couldn’t seem to rouse him from that distance.

Bella fretted about it, but that obvious worry was what made dear Ori pull her out of the tent. He walked with her as she checked on the dwarves settling once more, wary and disliking the water they yet splashed through, but polite and pleasant to her (Lady of Erebor, the Regent, the King’s Beloved, what names they gave her). He walked with her still as she walked through the Men as well, finding Sigrid and Bain doing much the same, Tilda still too young. Ori stayed with her as she found Hama being fussed over by healers and Durward both, and stayed out of the way as Bella tried to calm Fenena who didn’t seem to be doing well with the fact that her elder brother was so hurt, and took Urien a moment, humming one of her garden songs she eased Fíli with. Urien himself seemed rather at ease, if a little put out at being woken, while Fenena was the one worrying herself to bits, before her brother-in-law gathered her into an embrace he seemed to get as much comfort out of as he gave.

Hama himself was asleep soon as he was settled, and didn’t seem much worse for wear. Only when the healers declared no immediate damage did Fenena seem to get any relief, taking back Urien and whispering to the baby “It’s alright, your uncle’s doing well.”

Ori and Bella took their leave then, going to the elves. Tauriel’s own tent was entirely abandoned, which didn’t surprise Bella, that the elf hadn’t left Kíli’s side, but only Denerath was in the elven encampment. He looked tired, but a tiredness of the soul, rather than from lack of sleep.

“My lady,” he greeted, voice quiet.

“Denerath,” greeted Bella. “Where is your sister? And the others?”

“Rathtyen went to help a family of Men. Their children will take much longer than we will to calm once more. Feranheil and Eilonhuil…I admit, I do not know. But I am tired, my lady. I cannot bring myself to help, however much I may wish to.”

Ori frowned at that, but said nothing, just folded his arms as Bella went to sit next to the elf, barely hesitating a moment before touching his arm. “Is all well?” she asked, only barely softening a tone that said she knew full well that it was not.

Denerath said nothing, but turned to look in the direction of the dwarven tents a long moment. At last, he said, “Tauriel ran the direction the water was coming from. We heard the horns and she sent off running, all for the sake of the prince.” He turned to Ori then, and said, “I am old, master dwarf. And I am tired. Tired of all the bad blood between our peoples. I remember a time when your king trusted us of the Greenwood so much that when our king would not risk Smaug’s fire, he felt betrayed enough to declare that our king has no honor. I am tired of this hatred, I am tired of the demands of my king that I must demand more than the White Gems of Lasgalen from you.” Denerath tilted his head upwards and said, “Were it not for the snows, I might start to the seas. Perhaps in Valinor there is peace to be found.”

“Now excuse me, Denerath, but that sounds remarkably like giving up,” said Bella, mouth tight. The elf turned to her in surprise, as did Ori, who made abortive sounds in her general direction but never made it to words before Bella pushed on. “I understand the weariness, truly I do. Sometimes the mistrust and bad blood is too much for me, and I am not dwarf nor elf. But that does not mean we can give up. You see Tauriel running towards the flood to save the dwarf she loves and all you do is sit here and think of sailing away? Do you really think that will help her at all? She and Kíli will have elves and dwarves and Men too, more likely than not, all with an opinion or six about whether or not an elf and a dwarf can even _be_ in love in the first place. Seeing them bridging the gap and you are tired knowing what they will face and you want to _sail away_ rather than _standing with them?_ ”

“My lady,” he started, but Bella was on a roll now, the kind that made her rant and rail against the King Under the Mountain himself, even at his most obstinate.

“No wonder this bad blood has gone on! You lot, and you dwarves, Ori, you all see something like this and say ‘well that’s too difficult’ and _sail_ _away_ or-or refuse to lend a helping hand! Anyone who tries is promptly _abandoned_ and anyone who might offer their voice is off in Valinor! Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m hardly saying us hobbits are the perfect examples of that, goodness no, you’ll not find a Gimmer saying much more than ‘good morning’ at market to a Whitman and the whole business with Arnica and Aster was sixty-some years ago now. But at least we don’t _leave the mortal world_ when something seems a bit too hard!”

“Bella–” tried Ori.

“I understand that perhaps you have been thinking of sailing for a while, I won’t begrudge you that, but goodness, Denerath, of all the times to give up! Hobbits who go to _Bree_ are generally considered a bit strange at home, I came all the way to the Lonely Mountain, I dealt with goblins and trolls and _spiders_ , nasty things, really, I think anything with more than six legs should be outlawed, not to _mention_ the fact that there was a _dragon_ at the end of all that! I hadn’t even _spoken_ to a dwarf before they all showed up at my house and ate my larder clean without me knowing _why_ they were even there! And I still came! I came all the way here _without a handkerchief, mind,_ because the dwarves deserve a home. I looked a dragon in the eye and talked to it for a good long while and had to fight the damn thing, too!

“Oh, and then came the battle and I nearly lost Thorin and the boys and then he goes and names me regent for him – do you not think I’m tired? Do you not think I’m terrified someone is going to point out that I am not a dwarf and that I’m not worthy of Thorin? Honestly, I’m only a hobbit! There’s no bad blood between his people and mine, and I’m already exhausted in anticipation for the first unkind action sent my way! I know it’s going to happen eventually! Do you not think Kíli and Tauriel are even worse than me? I have the Company, at least! What do they have? Grudging allowance, at _best!_ So you’re staying on _these_ shores, Denerath, and if you are so wearied of the bad blood that seeing two trying to bridge that bloody gap makes you want to give up, then you _help them._ You don’t stand there and sigh and plan to leave because it’s _too hard._ ”

Ori looked like he wanted to drag her away or alternatively cease existing himself, and Denerath was staring at Bella with the very deliberate impassiveness that elves got on their faces. It appeared only when they knew full well that they were feeling more than they wanted anyone to know any elves felt at all. No words were said for a long time, Ori looking mortified, Denerath blank, and Bella huffing deliberate breaths to calm herself down, finally getting to her feet and saying, “I will meet to talk about sorting through the horde later. Come on Ori, before I do something I regret.”

“Do you not regret yelling at him?” Ori finally asked in a soft voice, so as not to be overheard.

“It needed saying,” said Bella shortly, still quite tense. “Best to do it now when I can blame it on the flooding and when we were alone.”

Ori frowned at her, probably easily able to tell that Bella was finding good excuses for a terribly rude outburst. But at least he didn’t say anything, splashing with her back to Bard’s tent. They brushed their way inside and found Bard with his children, holding them to him and just breathing. But he looked up when they came in and didn’t look angry.

“Find me when you’re ready, and we’ll see the divergence,” said Bella only. He nodded to her, and then pressed his nose back into Bain’s hair, breathing and knowing they were safe. Bella and Ori took their leave at that, and only then did Bella feel like she had seen everyone who needed seeing and she could return to the royal tent.

Dain was there, sitting on Bella’s stool near Thorin, and rather talking _at_ his cousin, who was quiet and nearly worrisomely still, eyes yet distant. Yet still Dain spoke, talking to him of how there were no few number of wrestling matches to burn off the panicked energy a halfway evacuation gave, about how he, Bard, and “that wonderful hobbit of yours, cousin” were going to go see the leak in the divergence once everyone was settled.

Thorin wasn’t reacting at all.

Óin saw Bella and came over to her, saying in what counted as an undertone for the hard of hearing dwarf, “He’s not said so much as a word since we came back down. Not even to tell his cousin off for babbling about all the same things over and over again.” Dain glanced over at him at that, brow raised, but didn’t stop talking about how he hoped that this whole event hadn’t changed Bard’s openness to the idea of a water garden for Dale, he’d quite enjoy drawing the plans for another, after his own in the Iron Hills.

The water at their feet was starting to wane, perhaps draining perhaps just drying, it was hard to know.

Bella bit her lip, she was still breathing through the harsh snapping she had unleashed onto Denerath, and glanced at Ori, who just shrugged at her and said, “I don’t know what’s happening any more than you. I barely spoke to Thorin before joining the company.”

Fíli, who had been staring worriedly at his uncle, turned at Ori’s voice and smiled, bidding the other dwarf over to him. The two started talking softly, and before long both were chuckling, which was very good. Kíli, for his part, was pale from the exertion of walking and asleep with his head on Tauriel’s shoulder, as she curled about him and kept watch on Thorin and Dain and the healers with quietly wary eyes, as though expecting any one of them to start shouting and pulling her away from him. Bella offered her a smile, which was faintly returned, Tauriel’s legs hanging awkwardly off the edge of the bed not built for her size.

Bella tucked away the image and the thought that they would probably have to commission a bed large enough for Tauriel away to think about when she needed something to smile about, and moved to Thorin’s side.

Dain got up from the stool without stopping his monologue, now talking about repairs done to the water garden back in the Iron Hills earlier that year, things Bella had no context for at all; the Oval Fountain, the Gallery of Spouts, Durin’s Grotto, all sorts of features in his Water Garden that Bella really would like to see someday.

“Thorin?” she murmured under Dain’s voice. “Thorin, my love…” she winced to be so very familiar with so much company, but Dain kept talking and when she glanced at him, he nodded at her. If he kept talking, then her own words might be a little more private. A catatonic king was something that couldn’t be _private,_ but he respected that hobbits were not as open with their emotions as dwarves were, and he could try and provide enough cover that she could try to rouse him without having a dozen onlookers listening to her.

“Thorin, my heart, where are you?” Bella murmured, touching his cheek and turning his face to her. His eyes were far away, and he didn’t seem to react to her beyond twitching away from her hand. That hurt, somehow, like pricking her finger while doing the mending. A sharp small pain, something that didn’t linger but hurt all the same. “Thorin, come back. I don’t know where you’ve gone, but please, come back. Come back to me.”

He didn’t respond, just closed his eyes, that furrow between his brows appearing once more. Bella let out a helpless breath of air, unsure what to do. She was spared by a guard ducking in and announcing that Bard was there, and would like to see Dain and Bella about the flood.

“To the divergence, my lady?” asked Dain, offering both a smile and his arm. Bella looked back to Thorin and took his hand a long moment, squeezing it and offering a kiss to the knuckles as she said,

“We’ll be back, Thorin. You must come back, too.”

She took Dain’s arm, and let herself be led. The jovial dwarf at her side cleared his throat a few times from the amount of talking he had been doing, and the three of them were mostly quiet as they walked up the path of the aqueduct to where the divergence was. Bofur and Nori and Álfr and all the rest of the workers were already there, some poking and prodding at the buildup and others along the drainage aqueduct. Álfr looked like they were come to execute him he was so pale and so sorry, and it took Dain clapping a strong hand on his shoulder and saying that no one blamed him, they were grateful that the leak had been fixed so quickly, before any of them were much further than halfway to the old barracks.

He calmed then, but very little, still twisting his hands and tugging his beard in nervous energy as she explained what exactly had happened, why the leak had started so late in the night rather than immediately when it began.

“The water buildup. We had to build the divergence a little further down than we would have liked, so as to get it outside,” Álfr explained. “Water picked up speed getting down here, made eddies as it built up to spill into the divergence. There’s a lot of power and motion there, and it wore down the edges. And then we had to cut off what was coming from the cistern, and let it drain, that’s why there was any flood at all, we had to let it drain. We wouldn’t have if there was any other option, my lady, my lords.”

“If that’s what you needed to do, then that’s what you needed to do, I trust you,” said Bard. Unfortunately for him, the rest of them were at a closer height to his hands than his face, so his understanding expression was undercut by the tightening of his hands.

Laketown probably saw floods, Bella thought. Laketown had been destroyed and there had been a serious moment where they might not have survived the winter. A familiar danger mixed with the fear of losing home for yet _another_ time. No wonder.

“Álfr,” said Bella. “How much longer will you need to drain the cistern?”

“Another day, then it’ll be at manageable levels. The other ones will need to be drained more, to make room for snowmelt come spring.”

“Why not this one?”

“Well, we’ll be using it, my lady. For bathing and laundry and drinking and all the rest.” She felt stupid asking that, but she, Dain, and Bard were all in their nightshirts for having been woken, and she thought she might be excused.

Bofur noticed them then, and waved cheerily from where he was on the wrong side of the buildup, checking it closely, Nori next to him with a sort of jeweler’s glass, looking ever closer. At a nudge from Bofur though, he too waved to Bella who smiled and waved back.

They looked confident to be right where the water would break through at least. Dain and Bard asked more questions, and they stayed until the cistern was opened to drain once more, and Bella could see the water racing down, swirling into an eddy as it met the divergence, building up before pouring into the divergent aqueduct and speeding away to drain out the mountain itself. Erebor, weeping.

All she wanted to do was go back to sleep.

Dain escorted her back down, while Bard stayed with yet more questions. The man had lived on water all his life, it wasn’t a surprise.

The ground of the encampment was just a little darker than normal, just moist and no longer _wet._ And what a relief that was. Dain took her back to the royal tent, and it was now that danger was passed and everyone was heading back to sleep that Bella felt ashamed for walking around in her nightgown. She wished she had a dressing gown at least, but as it was she just stepped half an inch closer to Dain, and let him guide her along.

He let her go and bid her goodnight, told her he’d be back the next day to check on his cousin, said he hoped that Thorin would be back from whatever state he had been in, and waited until she was inside before leaving.

Tauriel was gone, now, but Kíli’s hand was reaching to where she had been, which was almost ridiculous but that somehow it wasn’t. Litr was there, and he told her that the elf had left to let Kíli rest undisturbed. Bella _liked_ Litr, and she dearly hoped the man was only calling her “the elf” because it was late and they had all had a massive fright not that long ago rather than dislike for her kind.

She hoped Denerath was being kind to Tauriel, back where the elves were camped.

Fíli had fallen asleep not that long before, apparently, and Bella knew it took a while before Fíli’s sleep grew deep enough to talk in anything but a whisper, and so she spoke in what was barely more than a breath as she asked after Thorin.

“He never gained awareness,” apologized Litr, looking with her in the direction of the king. “He fell asleep not long after you left, my lady, he wouldn’t respond to us at all, but he did drink when we put water to his lips.”

“Instinct and nothing more,” breathed Bella. Just like Fíli in the depths of his fever, she remembered, and how harrowing and awful that had been. The idea of facing it again was…if it proved true, she wasn’t sure _what_ she was going to do.

“Master Óin and I are hoping it’s merely shock from being woken for evacuation like that. Their Highnesses had much the same, though they do seem better than His Majesty.”

Kíli had been in Tauriel’s arms, but Bella had let Fíli hold her hands for only a moment or two before leaving him. But he had been laughing with Ori, had Ori let him hold on? She could only hope. Still, she was very tired, and Litr sat back down with his notebook, scribbling away in it, doubtless making some sort of notes about his patients, and Bella moved to her own bed, stopping by each of her dwarves’ beds as she went, brushing her hand against Fíli’s hairline gently, stroking a thumb along the stubble on Kíli’s chin, and glancing to make sure Litr was fully engaged in his scribbling before she dropped a kiss to the corner of Thorin’s mouth, whispering there, “Please be back when you wake.”

Her bed felt welcoming and warm, and soon as she was horizontal, she was asleep.

Her dreams were troubled but nothing so horrifying to make her wake as they had in the past, just a sickening hovering awareness of that mud. It was why she had taken to sleeping with her boots on, they usually guarded against the bloody dreams growing too strong.

Still, they were enough that when the awfully familiar sound of nightmares woke her, she roused herself gratefully for the excuse to escape those dreams, even as she wished that her dwarves didn’t suffer a single bad dream between them. Sitting upright she looked to see who it was and saw Thorin shifting restlessly. Not quite thrashing but he never did that anyway.

It was a bare three steps from Bella’s bed to his, and she crossed it without realizing it, lowering herself to kneel at Thorin’s side, not to frighten him when he awoke and saw something looming over him. “Thorin, Thorin my heart, my love, wake up, wake up my love,” she whispered, her hands deliberately feather-soft where they touched him. “Come on, darling, wake up.”

Eventually he did with a choked breath, blue eyes wide and frightened and so very far from the dead catatonia of before. “Smaug–” he gasped out.

“Dead. Smaug is dead, Thorin. The Mountain is yours again. Come the spring thaw your people will return home.”

Slowly awareness filtered back into his eyes, and he closed his eyes, a trembling sob escaping him. Bella didn’t look away from him, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Litr quietly leave the tent, apparently knowing this was absolutely did not need to be witnessed by anyone. “I dreamed of when he came,” he admitted in a voice little more than breath. “I dream it so often now. I thought being inside the mountain would banish those dreams, but…”

“Oh, my dearest,” moaned Bella in sympathy. What absolute horror that story was. But it wasn’t just a story to Thorin, was it? He lost his home that day, he remembered it full and well. The aborted evacuation for flooding must have brought it all back to the surface. That accounted for the unresponsive place he had gone into earlier that night when they returned him to his bed. “Oh, my dearest love.” Uninvited but knowing she was welcome, Bella joined him in his bed, joining him on his generally unwounded side. It was the first time she had done so, but there was no other option, holding a hand was not going to be enough this time. Almost at once, Thorin’s arms wrapped about her once more, just holding her and breathing against her curls. Bella, for her part, let herself be held and held in return gently as possible not to hurt him, listening to his breath and heartbeat and feeling them start to lull her down.

It was a long time before he said, “You’re wearing boots.”

“Hmm?” she hummed questioningly, tilting her head back to look at him, already drowsy again.

“I thought hobbits didn’t wear anything on their feet.”

She knew what he spoke of, and felt cold suddenly, despite the warmth of his embrace. “It…” she tried, but nothing came out. _It’s fine,_ she meant to say. _Don’t worry about me, you just need to worry about healing._ But she couldn’t manage it.

“Bella,” said Thorin, so gentle and so sad.

“It…” she tried again, but choked up. Forcing herself to speak, it wasn’t assurances that came out. Instead she said, “It’s the mud. On the battlefield. It…I keep dreaming of it, I swear I feel it on my feet, I…the boots help, much as I hate them.”

“Oh, _ghivashel._ ”

“I know it’s not inside, I know it’s out there, I know, but I keep dreaming of it and I keep _feeling_ it, I keep feeling the _blood,_ ” she moaned, burying her face into his shoulder.

“My beloved…”

She let out a keen at that, muffled, but at the kiss he placed on her forehead, so gentle and understanding, she broke. Weeping desperately into his shoulder, muffling it not to bother anyone. She clung with weak hands, and Thorin, despite his wounds, had strength enough to hold her together while her soul flew apart, sobbing at the memory of the mud, the fear that it had poisoned any enjoyment of the earth, what the mud _meant,_ all that blood.

He held her, and murmured so quietly, “My love, my heart, I’m so sorry I never noticed. As we healed, you broke, and I will never forgive myself for letting you hurt so long as you did.”

At that apology, at that acknowledgment that she wasn’t alright and sorrow that he hadn’t seen it, she wept all the more, forgetting to quiet herself so as not to disturb anyone. She hadn’t wanted to wake Fíli and Kíli or make the guards who could probably hear her wails and sobs uncomfortable. But there in his arms, it was easy to weep until she had no more breath and no more tears, until she had to calm only because she had nothing more to pour forth. She fell to nothing but hiccups against Thorin’s shoulder, and she could hear, in a dear voice trickling across the tent, the end of a hobbit garden song.

“How can there be a cherry that has no stone? How can there be a chicken that has no bone? How can there be a baby with no crying? How can there be a story that has no end? A cherry when it’s blooming, it has no stone, a chicken in the egg, it has no bone. When the baby’s sleeping there’s no crying, and when I say ‘I love you’ it has no end,” sang Kíli, voice raspy from sleep.

Fíli took it up next, voice just as tired, and Bella found a new well of tears she hadn’t known she had, silently pouring onto Thorin’s shoulder as the boys sang the songs she had soothed them back to sleep with, all for to make her feel better. “Fare you well, my own true love, farewell for a while; I’m going away but I’ll be back if I go ten thousand miles. Ten thousand miles, my own true love, ten thousand miles or more. And the rocks may melt and the seas may burn if I no more return. Oh don’t you see that lonesome dove that flies from vine to vine? She’s weeping for her own true love as I shall weep for mine. Oh come back, my own true love, and stay a while with me. For if I had a friend on all this earth, you’ve been a friend to me.”

Thorin took it up next, voice deep and smoky as it had been that night in Bag End where his song had made Bella dash out the door after them at dawn. It might have been absurd to hear him sing a garden song, but it was such a balm to her soul at the moment, that she couldn’t feel anything but a rush of love. “Lavender’s blue, lavender’s green; when I am king, you shall be queen. Who told me so, who told me so? ‘Twas my own heart that told me so. Lavender’s green, lavender’s blue, if you love me, I will love you. Call up our men, set them to work; some to the forge, some to the fork. Some to cut jewels, some to cut corn; while you and I keep ourselves warm. Lavender’s green, lavender’s blue; you’ll be my queen when I wed you.”

He had changed the words, just enough, just to take it from a song a lover might sing about how they’ll love their love like a queen and instead make it a promise of how when he was king she would indeed be his queen. And it just made her press closer, tears of great fondness and joy welling up in her eyes as she heard Fíli take up another song. Fíli had more than the other two, and he sang of lilacs and rosemary and couples in the fields with the sheep, and somewhere among the songs, when Thorin hummed along to Fíli singing about the impossible tasks and the love-herbs, Bella fell asleep.

And she did not dream of blood or dragons. Instead she dreamed of a warm late spring day, when the crabapple trees were so laden with flowers one couldn’t see the leaves at all, lying in the grass watching the pink blossoms sway in the wind. In the distance she heard the dear laughter of all her friends, but she did not move to join them, for the one she loved most was resting his head on her stomach.

A hand brushed through the curls on her feet, and she shifted them, huffing a laugh at the persistent interest he had in them. And she laughed against when he finally lifted his head from her stomach and moved to kiss her, laughing against his mouth. Laughing like a pipe on a midsummer morning that he played with his hands at her sides, laughing as his beard tickled her neck, laughing and her sight filled with the crabapple blossoms, pink against the blue of the sky as her fichu of priceless worth was shifted and a kiss pressed above her heart by the one she loved. Laughed and laughed, her joy echoed in eyes so aching blue they put the sky to shame, in a smile like the sun that warmed her skin. She laughed and reached for him, holding him against her, laughing still and ever.

* * *

_In the morning, Balin and Dain went to see if Thorin had roused from his catatonia from the night before, both worried that it had been roused by memories of fleeing Erebor. They came inside to find Óin very nearly standing guard over his charges, clearly ready to beat them off if need be. Fíli and Kíli were much the same as ever, but tucked against Thorin was Bella, arm reaching over his chest and yet gentle, as though she knew even asleep where his wounds were and did not wish to hurt him. Thorin held her against him, nose pressed into her curls, sleeping peacefully._

_Balin glanced at Dain, who smiled and simply nodded._

_They’d leave them be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs are  
> The Riddle Song  
> Fare Thee Well (also called The Turtle Dove, though I learned it as The Lonesome Dove (thanks Kurt Weill))
> 
> Thanks for reading! And keep yourselves safe and healthy, look out for everyone around you, and make sure your loved ones are doing alright.


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